


Donnithorpe, revisited

by thebookhunter



Series: The ballad of Victor Trevor [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Jealous John, Just fucking talk to each other already, Let's try this, M/M, Multiple Narrators, Pining, Post-Canon, Reminiscing, Sexual frustration to the high heavens, Unreliable Narrator, Wedding Bells, massively so, still working on the tags, watch this space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:38:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1932360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookhunter/pseuds/thebookhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Mary, John returns to Baker street expecting to go back to the life he once knew. But after all that has gone down between them, for Sherlock that is simply not enough. </p><p>If only there was something, or someone, who could break through John's denial and wilful blindness and force him to see what's in front of his face.</p><p>"“Sherlock” says the man, voice strained with emotion, his face warm with pleasure.</p><p>John turns around and sees Sherlock smiling faintly, a very subtle expression, more in his eyes than on his lips.</p><p>“Hello” says Sherlock, eyes locked on the young man.</p><p>“Hello” says the man, returning the fixed stare.</p><p>Either John has been watching too much day-TV drama (which is possible, and he would be the first to admit it), or what just happened there was a ‘moment’."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is dedicated to Darthrosenberger. You know why.

 

Baker Street. A cloudy late morning in spring.

“I think there’s a client” says John peering out the window. “Young man, smart suit.” ( _Lean, hot_ , he adds in his mind) “Oscillation on the pavement meant a love affair, right?”

Sherlock hums, leaning over the microscope, not exactly in raptures of anticipation.

The doorbell rings.

“Mrs.Hudsoooon” they both shout out in unison.

They hear her mumble (John mouths mockingly “Not your housekeeper!”) and then the sound of the key and chain at the door.

John quickly tries to finish the page of the book he is reading. He reckons he has time before whoever it is gets here.

They overhear the muffled conversation downstairs. The man’s voice is low and hard to make out, but Mrs. Hudson’s words come through much more clearly.

“Yes, dear, it’s upstairs. …Oh, no, this little old thing? …Yes, how did you know? …Oh, you.”

Sherlock and John exchange a look. She is flirting, isn’t she?

“No, I’m sure they won’t mind, follow me” they hear her say.

“Thank you” says the man, his voice now clearer and more audible.

Sherlock has suddenly straightened up his head and is now paying close attention, eyes wide, alert, expectant. John raises an eyebrow. The man’s voice comes through louder now, saying something that peels a ring of giggles from Mrs. Hudson.

A knock at the door. Sherlock freezes, tense as one of the strings of his violin.

John huffs and, making a big point out of gruffly smashing the book on the chair, he goes to open the door.

“I’ll get it then, shall I?” he grumbles.

The young man he saw through the window towers above him like a bloody giraffe. A chiselled-face, supermodel good-looks, bespoke-suit type of giraffe. John’s bristles stand up and stay up.

“You must be John Watson” says the man, his voice mellow, raspy, offering his hand. John shakes it, without even realising the man hasn’t yet introduced himself. Instead, his attention has been diverted to a point above John’s head.

“Sherlock” says the man, voice strained with emotion, his face warm with pleasure.

John turns around and sees Sherlock smiling faintly, a very subtle expression, more in his eyes than on his lips.

“Hello” says Sherlock, eyes locked on the young man.

“Hello” says the man, returning the fixed stare.

Either John has been watching too much day-TV drama (which is possible, and he would be the first to admit it), or what just happened there was a ‘moment’.

The man slips past John, walks towards Sherlock in long, elegant strides, and takes him strongly in his arms. John’s eyes widen in surprise, his eyebrows try to join his hairline.

Sherlock lifts his arms and hugs him back. Crushingly tight. And shuts his eyes. And buries his face in the man's neck. In stages, as if crumbling piece by piece

_What. The. Fuck._

They stay like that for what feels like hours to John, who is shifting on his feet like a bull in his stall, hands clenching and unclenching and nose scrunching, and sniffing furiously, which is a twitch he is more or less aware of but really, really can’t do anything about in certain situations. Like this one here right now.  

“So you knew each other then?” he says in the end, abruptly, and a bit too loud. It may be a stupid question, but somebody has to bloody say something. This hugging thing is getting old.

Sherlock and whatshisface pull apart, _bloody finally_. The man’s paws move away from around Sherlock’s neck (only to rest on his shoulders), but Sherlock’s hands are still on the man’s fucking _hips_ , _under_ the bleeding suit jacket. John’s mouth twitches, he clenches his jaw.

“John, this is Victor Trevor, a friend from college” says Sherlock, and if John didn’t know him better, he could swear his voice sounds slightly choked.

He could also swear he has seen the man -Victor- wince at the word ‘friend’.

An awkward silence follows, when John says nothing and just stays there, stiff and tense and obviously hostile.

Then Sherlock gestures to the sofa.

“Please” he says to Victor. Victor makes his way there, his walk as smooth as a bloody tiger. He looks right at home, crossing his ridiculously long legs and reclining back comfortably, all grace and easy manners. Sherlock takes his place in the armchair. John stays on his feet, on high alert, which probably comes out as a bit weird, but it would be much weirder if he actually tried to do this sitting down -trust him on that, he is a doctor.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Sherlock asks.

“It was time” says Victor, his eyes boring on Sherlock’s. “Don’t you think?”

Sherlock nods gravely once, purses his mouth. They stare into each other’s eyes in silence a bit longer. Oh great. Another bleeding _moment_. John harrumphs.

“How are you, Victor?” says Sherlock.

John scrunches his forehead in silent disbelief. ‘How are you?’ Really? Since when does Sherlock inquire after people’s fucking health? And what is next, the fucking weather?

“I’m fine, Sherlock, how are you?”

“Oh, you know me” says Sherlock.

Victor smiles and nods. A stupid, kind, sweet smile with a stupid amount of bright white, perfect teeth and stupid fucking _dimples_. He’s bleeding _lovely_. John might or might not have just shown some teeth himself, but he was very much not smiling, and if he was, it wasn’t kindly.

“I see there have been recent developments in your life” says Sherlock.

Victor smiles some more. John persists on frowning, wondering why didn’t Sherlock just blurt out his dozen deductions as he usually does with anybody else.

“Oh, I’ve missed this.” says Victor, with a delighted chuckle. That warm, silken, raspy voice, as a fucking barefooted early evening walk down Copacabana beach with your lover, that’s positively grating on John’s nerves. “Do me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock has joined his fingertips under his chin, as he does, and tilts his head. (John is still getting over the “do me”.)

“You’ve given up smoking, at least 2 years ago, probably more. You regularly exercise outdoors, a water sport, in the sea. You own a cream labrador, still a puppy, and two adult cats, one black, one ginger. You live in the countryside but you slept in town overnight, and you keep a place of your own here. And you’ve recently become engaged.

Victor rubs the plain silver ring on his finger. John had seen it perfectly well when Victor’s hands were _on Sherlock’s blooming hair_ , but he had not given it a second thought. As usual. Which is why Sherlock is the consultant detective and John is just his blogger. 

Sherlock looks at Victor, who is smiling calmly, apparently enjoying being deduced very much. Which in an of itself would be ringing all of John’s alarms, were it not for every-fucking-thing else already doing precisely that, quite bloody loudly.

“How recently” says Victor.

“About a month. You keep playing with the ring. Did I get it right?”

“Six weeks” says Victor. “It’s a thick ring.” (And that playful, mischievous smirk is _adorable_ , fuck.) (Not to mention sexy. Double fuck.) (...Actually, make that a triple fuck.)

A silent spell passes between the two of them as they look fondly at each other. John scrunches his nose and purses his mouth, and is all he can do to sort of disguise the fact that he is quietly, internally fuming.

“What’s his name?” says Sherlock.

John’s ears prick up. _His_ name?

“Alex” says Victor, still smiling, his eyes warmly trained on Sherlock.

John might or might not have blanked out.

Sherlock nods, rubs his mouth on the touching tips of his outstretched thumbs, as if deliberating.

“Are you happy?” he says at last.

“I thought you could deduce the state of a relationship at a glance,” teases Victor.

Sherlock does that smiling with his eyes thing.

“I’d still rather hear you say it.”

John frowns. He frowns _a lot._

Victor smiles.

“Yes, I am. Very happy” says Victor, and he looks it.

“Congratulations” says Sherlock.

“Thank you” says Victor.

Aaaaaand another fucking moment.

“Tea? Anyone?” says John, arguably a bit brusquely, because enough, for Christ’s sake.

They both look at him, probably remembering for the first time in a good while that he is even there.

“No, thank you, I’m not going to stay” says Victor, standing up on his feet and making for the door.

Sherlock gets up too and escorts him.

“Dinner?” says Victor. “Tonight at 8? I’ll pick you up.”

Sherlock nods.

Victor leans over (he is fucking taller than Sherlock, and not just by a little), closes his eyes and kisses his face. Not a peck, something a bit longer, with more substance. John is livid, and he knows it.

Now one more intense look, ( _theeere we go, aaaand…_ )

...Exits tall, ( _lean, hot_ ), smartly-suited young man.

 

“Sherlock?” says John, and perhaps he swallows. He is struggling to find the ‘right’ wording for ‘I demand an explanation’ that doesn’t say ‘I demand an explanation’ but still conveys the general notion than an explanation is demanded.

“Yes, please.” says Sherlock.

“What?”

“Tea.”

Sherlock glides to the window slowly and parts the curtains, and watches Victor go.

John hasn’t moved one inch.

“You’ve got questions” says Sherlock, still facing the window.

Damn right he does.

“Who is he?” asks John.

“A college friend” he says with a slow, deliberative tone.

“A friend.”

“Yes.”

“A friend.”

“John, if you want a different answer, ask me a different question.”

John swallows. Clenches and unclenches his hands. Harrumphs, deep in the back of his throat.

“I’ll get that tea.”

Sherlock sighs.

“Actually, no” says Sherlock then. “I’ll be in my room.”

 

And John stands there like a lemon in the middle of his bleeding empty living room, wondering what the fuck just happened and why are there deep nail-shaped indentations in the palms of his hands.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So, ‘ask me a different question’. And what question would that be, Sherlock? “Is he your ex?” Is that what you want me to ask you? Why in the world would I?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story takes place some time into the future, where many things that we don't know yet will have happened -a resolution to the Moriarty and Mary conundrum. I'm deliberately leaving the details fuzzy. 
> 
> I'm not going to develop the thing in the fic, because it's not really relevant to the plot, but for clarity I'm going to explain, more or less, what John is talking about: In this verse, the baby was real, and Mary was a villain in league with Moriarty. She ran away with the baby, and John and Sherlock chased her, only to find out the baby is not John's. Mary dies and Sherlock and John return the baby to her biological father, David. There was one last facedown with Moriarty involving an explosion.

 

 

 

‘If you want a different answer, ask me a different question.’

 

Even with the telly on and a novel open on his lap, John can’t keep these words away from his mind for long. Well, if that wasn’t a dare, it was a double dare. Sherlock was poking him, trying once more to bring up the _thing_ , wasn’t he. The elephant in the room. The kiss.

Well, John decided a long time ago that the lid was to stay firmly shut on that particular can of worms. If only Sherlock would leave it the fuck alone, they might start to patch up what was left and, I don’t know, rebuild their, their friendship, such as it was, to resemble what had been before _her_ and the baby happened (he could not bring himself to say the names even in his mind. The one was a lie and the other one, well, he could not get anywhere near the other one without struggling for air.)

So, ‘ask me a different question’. And what question would that be, Sherlock? “Is he your ex?” Is that what you want me to ask you? Why in the world would I? What are the possible answers?

Possible answer number 1: _No, he isn’t_. Well, of course he isn’t. Sherlock does not _do_ boyfriends. Sherlock does not _do_ sex. Sherlock is… whatever the hell he is, and it really doesn’t matter what that might be exactly, because it all comes down to the same damned thing in the end: John can’t bloody have him. It’s not possible. It’s not going to happen. End of. You’ve known that since the beginning, John Watson. Even if you once allowed yourself to become confused by… by your own wishful thinking, nothing more. You thought there were signs -the long stares, the lingering touches, the warm smiles lighting his whole face, the pregnant silences. You thought ‘when this mess is over, I am going to tell him.’ Because you thought… You thought Sherlock also… Forget it. Whatever you thought, you were wrong. You were imagining things. You blew it.

Possible answer number 2: _Yes, he is my ex._ Great. Just great. Brilliant. Fantastic. So not just _transport_ then. So boyfriends _are_ Sherlock’s area after all. And yes, Sherlock is capable of… “romantic feelings” and (god) sex. Just not with _me_ , then. That makes me feel so much better. Yes, of course he would with that bloody ten-feet-tall Greek god in the sharp suit and the even sharper cheekbones, the bedroom voice and the naughty smile and the sex-on-wheels smooth gig he’s got on and the ‘fucking you’ stare. Who wouldn’t want _that_? If John didn’t want to rip his eyes out and strangle him with his bare hands, he himself would probably… Oh, _damn_ _this_.

 

So you see, Sherlock, there is no way I’m going to ask a question with which I have nothing to learn that is going to make any bloody difference, and quite a lot of my self-respect to lose. Whatever is left of it by now, what with all that has happened between us.

 

Or _to_ us. Because what a year it has been. John feels as if he has gone a long way to end up right where he started, in Baker Street, pining for Sherlock Holmes.

A year and a half ago he was married, about to have a baby, living a normal life. Then it all had gone down the crapper, and he had felt cursed, condemned to never be able to have what other people took for granted. But the ordeal had brought him and Sherlock close together again, in a way he had missed - to put it really, really mildly. And when Sherlock had began to… (God, it’s still hard. Deep breaths.) When John had started to believe that he was getting hints or-or signs from Sherlock that made him think that... (oh, god) that he was interested… Well, then John had not felt cursed anymore. He had started to feel that the hell he was being put through actually had a meaning. Not a metaphysical meaning, no. But that there was a purpose or a usefulness to his personal via crucis, that they were walking a hard, painful road, but that they were learning important stuff on their way, both him and Sherlock, and that by the end of it, things would be possible that would not have been possible before this whole mess started. Before Sherlock jumped off the roof of St Barts, even. That is (stop beating around the bush, John Watson) that he would-would be able to con-confess his feelings to Sherlock, and Sherlock would be ready to… to hear it. That Sherlock also... That it was going to happen, at last. That it would all be worth it in the end. (Long, heavy exhale.) What a pathetic idiot you are, John Watson.

 

He knows he should not beat himself up about the situation as much as he does. The part of him that actually listens to his shrink tells him to not be so harsh on himself, that he had been under a lot of stress for a long time, that his feelings had been all over the place. That Sherlock himself was not the same man who had jumped off that roof, and that they had had very little chance to get reacquainted before the whirlwind had taken them.

So it’s perfectly understandable that John had got mixed up with Sherlock’s… words, body language, whatever. But Christ, he had felt like such an idiot. He still does.

Not even therapy-John can give him an easy pass on his timing. A life-or-death situation is not the best moment to suddenly reveal to your best friend that you have _feelings_ for him. But Sherlock was walking into his almost certain death, _again_ , and John could not just let him walk away and… _Jesus Christ, how many times do I have to say goodbye to you._

The scene is burnt in his mind and it often plays behind his eyes on a loop.

‘Sherlock, wait!’ he had shouted.

Sherlock had turned to face him, coat in the wind, that look of hopelessness on his face. He did not want to die, and no matter what he had told John and how much faith he claimed to have in that last mad scheme of his, John could tell from Sherlock’s eyes that he was not counting on walking out of that one with his life necessarily.

John had walked over to him, his mind full of the things he had wanted to say for bloody years. There wasn’t time. He gaped like a fish out of water trying to force the words out. Everything sounded dumb. ‘I love you Sherlock’ didn’t even begin to cover it. In the end he couldn’t say a thing. He had just taken Sherlock’s face in his hands, pulled him down, and kissed him. Because he had thought it was their last night on earth. Because at that moment he had believed (god, it still tears him apart) that it was what Sherlock wanted as well. That Sherlock wanted _him_.

His lips had met a marble statue. He had jolted back, as if burned -or rather frostbitten-, and he had been faced with an expression of shock and utter terror on Sherlock’s face. And the ground had crumbled under John’s feet and there had been no hole deep enough on the planet for him to crawl into and die.

 

Cue the godsent explosion and the chance to forget the whole unhappy business into welcome unconsciousness.

 

John had woken up two days later, surrounded in the aseptic white of a hospital suite, opening his eyes to Sherlock’s mangled, bruised, beautiful face, such warmth and joy in his eyes, and to Sherlock’s hand on his. And for a few blissful seconds he did not remember. He let himself sigh a deep breath of relief and elation, because they were alive, and safe, and together, and now he could tell Sherlock everything, as he had sworn himself he would if they made it, and...

…And then he remembered.

Fuck. Sherlock _knew_. Sherlock had not returned the kiss. He had recoiled, rigid as a board, and had pulled _that_ _face_. Sherlock did not reciprocate. Embarrassment and mortification seized John fast. For a few minutes you could have used the discomfort in the air to butter bread with. Sherlock had opened his mouth, a very intense, charged stare in his eye, visibly gathering himself to speak. John had felt his stomach take a plunge.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ he had said, with a quick, warning glare to drive the point home. He had avoided Sherlock's eyes after that.

Sherlock tried a few more times, giving his intentions away with that blatant look of barely fenced-in emotion, until John had told him that he could either leave it alone or _leave_. Sherlock had obeyed, meekly. Which was disturbing in itself.

When Sherlock eventually nodded off on the unoccupied bed next to him, that first day after John regained consciousness -the nurses making a point of letting John know that Sherlock should not be out of his own bed, and that he had a certain tweed-clad, tall, oddly scary man to thank for the allowances they were making-, John had been staring at him and almost got up to touch him, to make sure he was there, alive and well, and to… just to touch him. Sherlock had three-coloured bruises all over his face, cuts on his cheekbones -of course, they stand out so much they are bound to be the first in line to get hurt- and that cut on his eyebrow would scar. He looked old and childish at the same time, and fragile, and exhausted.  John’s breathing had turned laboured with sheer longing. He wanted to hold him in his arms so badly, just hold him tight.

He had felt a claw around his throat. There was nobody else who could even begin to compare, nobody. And he sort of made a deal with himself that day, watching Sherlock finally overcome by sleep after standing guard next to John for two days, that he was done looking.

Because Sherlock does love him, in his own way. Therein lies the irony that is killing him. John knows that he is the one person to have broken through Sherlock’s armour. That Sherlock needs him. It’s not Sherlock’s fault that he is the way he is, that life is unfair, that happy endings are seldom found outside of Hollywood movies. That people have to make do with what is there.

When Sherlock had asked him to move back into Baker street, three months after the big bang - during which, what with hospital stays, police, newspapers and Mycroft, there had been no time to really sit down and talk, or even think -, John was going to say no. He just could not face him. And the fact that Sherlock was even asking, while generous and kind, only hurt John more. To John it simply meant that Sherlock was over it. The last shred of hope John had been harbouring that it had all been a misunderstanding vanished away. Sherlock was ready to put the unfortunate incident behind him and resume the life they once had.

So he had been faced with two choices.

The rest of his life without Sherlock Holmes had appeared before his eyes as an empty, miserable, colourless thing, with never-ending days and sleepless nights, daunting, beige, unnecessary, minuscule, simply not worth bothering with. He had tried it once. He was uninterested. That was not the choice. The choice was there, patiently waiting, regularly cleaned and oiled, always loaded, in his drawer.

The second choice was tough. It meant going back to orbiting Sherlock knowing that he would never get any closer. And he would not have taken it, had it not been for those two years, those damned two years that had taught John that he would sell his soul to have Sherlock back, no matter how.

In the end it was such a simple thing. Sherlock lived. John did not have to face the rest of his life without him. You can’t have it all, John Watson, but you can have _this_. And all you have to do is get over the-the feelings.  He could never rip it out of him - you don’t _get_ _over_ Sherlock Holmes - but he could bottle it, right? Oh yes, he could teach Mr. Jack Daniels a few things about bottling. He could and he would.

So he did move back into Baker Street.

But he had made a point from the moment he set foot on the threshold - in his own tortuous, issue-skirting but firm kind of way- that they were not going to talk about _that_ _thing_. That they were both to forget about it, if there was to be any chance for this to work. And Sherlock had nodded, but John would not have been surprised to know that he was crossing his fingers behind his back, because he certainly had not forgotten, and he had tried to bring the subject up many times, making John storm out of the flat in a huff on a few occasions when he just would not drop it.

Because now Sherlock is a changed man, isn’t he? No, he has not started to do the groceries and he still doesn’t observe the very basic health and safety practices in their own fridge, and he has not stopped tuning his violin at 3 a.m., but he has definitely “matured” somewhat in a few ways, and has become more “acquainted with his own emotions” - as John’s therapist calls it. And he has been reading too many _Psychology Today_ type magazines or something, because now he apparently wants to talk about _their_ _issues_ , probably to get “closure”, or whatever it is they are calling it these days.

Closure, John’s arse. He is not going to revive the most uncomfortable, disappointing, most confusing and heart-breaking moment of his life for some fucking _closure_. No, he has his own way that he lives by, which consists of sweeping things as far under the carpet as they can go without emerging on the other side, and forget about it. And he is sticking to his ways, because every time he has not, every time he has dared to put his heart out there and open up, it has been trampled and torn to shreds. His shrink calls it “trust issues”. John calls it basic survival skills.

So sod _Psychology Today_. What works for healthy, sensible, well-adjusted individuals will not work for them. What do we get from talking, Sherlock. You will get to hear that your best friend is not satisfied with the current state of affairs between the two of you. That he wishes he could hold your hand sometimes down the street, and take you out every now and then for dinner and a movie, and cuddle up on the sofa to watch the telly with some take-away, and kiss you senseless and touch you under your clothes and get into bed with you and make love to you until you both fucking faint. And that he has dreamed about it pretty much since you first met. That he wants you. Naked. In his arms. That he wanks in the shower fantasising about it. That he can’t fucking breathe sometimes out of sheer, desperate need for it, all of it.

Is that what you fucking want to hear, Sherlock? Because, seriously, which friendship survives something like that? (Even between healthy, sensible, well-adjusted individuals, which John and Sherlock arguably are not.) Which one. Name one. Ok, three, name three.

No, he is not going to risk what is left of their friendship for some bloody _closure_.

The situation is dire but, to be fair, it is not all just down to Sherlock. John himself has found that he can’t go back to pining hopelessly as he once had. He had managed once, sort of, but he is choking in it now. Perhaps it’s because of those few months on the chase, so close together, and the way Sherlock had been then, and how possible, how real, how attainable it had felt for a brief, glorious spell. For whatever reason, John is now yearning for Sherlock painfully, miserably, every damned waking hour, and he is very, very angry about it.

And Sherlock is not his oblivious old self anymore. He still pouts and huffs like a five-year-old sometimes when he doesn’t get his own way, but now, whenever there is a problem and John gets a bit carried away with the kind of shit he throws at him (though he hasn’t called him a machine in a good while), Sherlock looks hurt and sad and bitter. Sherlock. Bitter. Because of him. It breaks John’s heart. He had wished once that Sherlock was a bit more human. Be careful what you wish for, John Watson. Machines don’t suffer. And Sherlock is suffering, life seems to be draining out of him. John is even beginning to lose hope that even a juicy case would do much good, if any was to turn up.

And after three months of miserable cohabitation, thick with strained silences and stilted, tense conversations, and poor in their old, friendly bickering and even poorer in good fits of laughter, realisation is starting to dawn on John that… that it is over. That it is not going to work. That they will not be able to return to the past. And that the dazzling light that was Sherlock Holmes has dimmed so much that John finds himself, more and more, struggling to get out of bed every morning, and looking into an abyss at nights, during his long, sleepless hours.

And John simply does not know what he is going to do from now on, if he cannot even find it in himself to hope that things might, just might, get better between him and Sherlock, and that Sherlock will shine again, become a whirlwind again, sweep John off his feet day in day out again, make everything worth it for him, as he once did. He does not know how he will go on. Get out of bed in the morning. Feed himself. Wash. Work. Breathe.

 

*

 

Early evening and John is on the sofa, watching a rerun of “Mock the Week” on Dave, his book still open pretty much on the same damn page as this morning. He hears the door to Sherlock’s room -for the first time today, John thinks he hasn’t been out once-, then footsteps down the corridor, and then the shower starts running. Well, of course, Sherlock is getting ready for his date with Mr. Universe.

John swallows thickly. Christ, fuck, you are forty-four years old, John Watson. You are not going to bloody cry, are you?

He gets up decisively. He is not going to stay here and mope. He grabs his keys and wallet.

‘Sherlock? I’m going to the shops!’ he calls.

There is no reply. The sound of the shower must be drowning his voice.

It should not hurt, it’s ridiculous. It’s not like Sherlock is purposely ignoring him.

John heads out and, ridiculous or not, he just about manages not to slam the door.

 

*

 

Victor is early. He has been climbing up the walls with nerves all afternoon and simply could not keep away any longer.

He charms his way into 221B again. He listens to Mrs. Hudson delightfully twittering about how happy she is to have her boys back home, how much they are all looking forwards to some peace, how dreadful it all has been, and that it all will be better now that they are together again -and all along Victor can’t stop his eyes from darting to the stairs that lead to Sherlock.

He tells her about the wedding, and she sounds so genuinely pleased for him that he kisses her. He gentlemanly offers his arm to climb upstairs, and she chatters on about pleasant little nothings that tinkle like little bells in Victor’s ear. She lets herself inside the flat with her own set of keys.

‘Sherlooooooock…? Your nice tall friend is here!’ she bellows.

‘Be a minute’ comes the muffled reply from somewhere at the end of the corridor.

‘Make yourself at home, dear, he’ll be along’ says Mrs.Hudson, patting him on the forearm. But she is not moving. Victor can feel the waves of intense curiosity emanating from underneath her nonchalant façade.

‘It’s a lovely flat’ says Victor, trying to make conversation, since she is still there. ‘Has Sherlock lived here long?’

‘Oh, for years, darling! Funny that he never mentioned you. Do the two of you… go back?’ she asks, eyelashes fluttering over an interrogator’s unwavering stare, her pitch getting higher and higher.

‘Way back’ says Victor, in a confidential purr. ‘Ages.’

She smiles, expectant.

‘Childhood friends?’

Victor grins, wiggles an eyebrow.

‘College.’

By the way she starts giggling, you would say Victor has just told a dirty joke. He taps the side of his nose and winks, as if he has just let her into a secret. He kisses the back of his hand and she blushes.

‘Oh, _you_!’ And finally, she leaves.

 

Victor takes a deep breath as he sweeps his eyes across the room. He didn’t manage to have a proper look this morning, overwhelmed as he was with seeing Sherlock again. Sherlock has a way of lending an extra layer of intensity to things. Just his eyes can turn pretty much any conversation into disembodied fucking, and with Victor he never held back. It used to drive him mad with lust. _God, Sherlock, how you made my heart beat._

Even with Sherlock piercing into his soul with those wondrous eyes of his - Victor had almost forgotten how many bloody shades of blue, green, grey, sometimes even purple and amber are in those irises, and how much they change, and how quickly - he had still spotted the Wallace box, in pride of place on top of the mantelpiece. He makes his way towards it and takes it in his hands, finding the weight familiar. Which is impossible, of course - he has only held it a few times in his life, and the last one was over fifteen years ago, when he left it on top of the table at Mycroft’s flat, before moving to New York. He had never told his dad that Sherlock had left it behind when he… when he left him. He didn’t want his dad to think any less of Sherlock. The fact that they had liked each other had touched him so much. He had seen a future where the three of them…

Anyway. Seeing the box where it belongs, well, it just makes things right. He still needs to take a moment when the image of his father’s hands in his mind overcomes him - his long, bony fingers, the sprinkle of brown spots under the light tuft of grey hair, every pore visible. How the skin looked like paper in hospital, with visible blue veins and fans of red capillaries, but like wax in the coffin, no veins, _no_ _blood_ , the markings almost as if applied with pencil and brush on a perfectly white canvas.

He swallows.

Enough of that.

The violin catches his eye then, resting precariously on top of a pile of books, papers and… (is that a scimitar?)

Is it the same instrument? Yes, it would appear so, a very old thing with a venerable patina, dark and rich, sunk deep in the grooves and cracks. So like Sherlock to just leave it there as if it was junk. _Sherlock, Sherlock. Who is the rich kid here?_ He wonders whether he still composes, and whether he still tells himself that he only does it because it helps him think. _Darling, those things you used to write had nothing to do with thinking_. He runs a finger along the body of the box, touches lightly where the chin rests.

He had always thought of Sherlock’s talent for the violin as some sort of hidden superpower. He was in awe of his ability to create beauty like that, seemingly out of nothing, a piercing beauty that makes you feel things whether you want to or not, and drives your moods like no other art does, and then vanishes as if it has never been - leaving only Sherlock, looking shaken, his eyes lost in a place just for him alone. How he wanted him when he saw him bend and tense with feeling, as if the violin was a living thing with a will of its own that shook and dragged him to and fro, side to side, feeding on his passion - and yet the more life the violin demanded from him, the more alive Sherlock appeared. It was the only times Victor saw Sherlock really let go of himself. Well, and sometimes when they danced, and, hm, when they made love, if Victor pushed the right buttons. And if he pushed them really, really well, then Sherlock completely lost it. God, he remembers those times well.

Victor closes his eyes and lets his mind wander. Perhaps he should not be indulging in this kind of memories. Matters of propriety. He smirks. He has always been awful at denying himself. They have had fun together. He refuses to remember only the shitty bits.

Focusing on the room again, he notices something. There are so many things that he does not recognise, but they all seem familiar, so… so Sherlock. He presumes that John’s things are here too, lost amidst the general, oddly harmonious disarray, but nothing stands out as if it does not belong. Whichever they are, John’s things have blended in with Sherlock’s perfectly, as if they were always meant to go together. Hm. Well, Victor is not afraid to admitting to a strong poetic vein, and if this is where this thought just sprung from, well, it doesn’t make it one bit less true.

He does a turn on himself, taking it all in, and his eyes come to rest on the two mismatched armchairs facing each other, as two old friends sitting in companionable silence. He thinks to himself ‘this could have been my chair’. Then he smiles and twirls the silver ring on his finger. He has a chair.

There is a pile of tapes by the music player - an ancient artifact from the Devonian period that was already old and battered when Sherlock had it in his dorm room. He fumbles through the tapes, with tags scribbled with Sherlock’s graceless, vigorous handwriting, admirably consistent from the oldest tags to the ones that look more recent, and finds one that makes him frown. “Waltz, for Mary and John”. He bites his lip. Sherlock, who guarded his true heart so jealously, never could hide when he played or wrote music. He slides it into the machine -the play button still sticks - and listens.

Only a few bars into the piece - elegiac, elegantly restrained - there’s a rustle at his back and a long-fingered, creamy-white hand materialises at his side and pushes the stop button. Victor turns around to find Sherlock standing rigid with his eyes low, hair dripping wet, shirt only partially buttoned, no socks, no shoes, serious as the grave.

Victor smiles faintly. _Sensitive subject, I see. I should have known._ Apologies, he says with his eyes when Sherlock looks at him. Sherlock nods.

Having him so close, temptation is strong. Once again, Victor is awful at denying himself. He plays another tape. It’s one of the older ones. The first notes twinkle in the air and… a little smirk surfaces in the corner of Sherlock’s mouth, ever so faint, barely even there. But Victor had known what he was looking for, and he spots it at once.

He sort of knew that Sherlock remembered everything - this is what he had told him - but it doesn’t warm him any less to be faced with the visible evidence that he remembers this.

Victor offers his hand. Sherlock stares at it but doesn’t take it.

‘Come on’ says Victor. ‘You used to love this one.’

Sherlock still doesn’t move, and he keeps his eyes low. _Oh, Sherlock, what are you so scared of?_ Victor takes Sherlock’s right hand -so rigid- and places it on his own waist, then he holds Sherlock’s left hand in his and brings it to his chest, trapped between the two of them. He wraps Sherlock’s back with his other arm and pulls him close. _Come on, darling, it’s just a dance._ He rests his cheek on Sherlock’s temple -that couple of inches height difference that made them slide perfectly into each other- and sways slowly, humming close to Sherlock’s ear.

He feels Sherlock take a deep, deep breath and his body loosens up somewhat, enough for Victor to make him sway with him. _That’s it, darling, that’s it. Let go. I’ve got you._ Sherlock’s body has changed, but his scent is the same, and it shakes Victor deep. He hugs him close.

‘God, I’ve missed you’ he mutters, half choked, caution and cool detachment to the fucking wind.

Sherlock’s arms snake around his waist and he clings tight. He’s not dancing now. He is strong. _Dear god, when was the last time you hugged somebody?_ He kisses his face and Sherlock leans into the touch, his breath shuddering over the skin of Victor’s throat. Victor rakes his fingers into Sherlock’s still wet hair and Sherlock groans. _Oh, darling, my darling, you are fucking starving…_

Sherlock jolts up and shakes loose, eyes low, and rushes away down the corridor. Fleeing. Only then does Victor hear the noise of keys at the lock. He stands there in his spot, trying to be ready to face John.

 

*

 

John makes it to Baker street well in time before 8. Yes, he should probably just keep away and save himself some pain and misery, but _no, of course he bloody won’t._

Some disturbance draws his eyes up towards the window and _what the holy fuck is that he is seeing_ , Sherlock and Victor in each other’s arms and are they bloody _dancing_?

A claw of sheer, unmerciful pain in John’s chest stops him breathing, and when he does, it feels as if he is inhaling fire.

He climbs the stairs quietly, feeling like a sneaky little shit, and throws the door open.

Victor stands alone by the window, hands in his trouser pockets, posture relaxed - shoulders low, legs splayed. The fucking king of the world.

‘Good evening, John’ he says.

He has spruced up. He wears a black three-piece suit trim around his slim waist, with a silky white button-down shirt, an ensemble that probably costs as much as a few months rent, not that John is an expert. The utility bill might just about cover one of the shoes. He looks dazzling, crotch-wrenchingly sexy. Jesus, if _this_ is what does it for Sherlock, of course John never stood a bloody chance!

Has John said anything yet? He is pretty sure he hasn’t. Does that make him look stupid in front of Mr. Universe here? Yes, it probably does.

Sherlock turns up, hair still wet, tugging at the shirt - that bloody purple shirt - so that it settles well behind the waistband of the shrink-wrap-tight trousers of his black suit. John tries to reign in his eyes as they stubbornly attempt to do a full-body run over Sherlock. Sherlock is never less than infuriatingly sexy in John’s eyes, but fuck, when he dresses up - or is it the night and the things it does to his skin and his eyes and the long line of his throat, Christ, he is like a bloody extraterrestrial. John’s mouth just gapes.

‘Sherlock, you look wonderful’ says Victor, his voice so rich and warm and jovial _and fuck him fuck him fuck him!_

John doesn’t say a thing. He notices Victor squinting at him under a frown, and blushes a deep crimson, being suddenly reminded that his face can’t keep a secret, betraying every emotion and thought inside his head to anyone who cares to pay attention -the only exception being a certain flatmate of his, thank god for small mercies. He turns his face down and away, but he knows it’s too late

‘Ready? asks Victor to Sherlock.

‘When you are’ says Sherlock.

‘Good evening, doctor Watson’ says Victor, one hand on Sherlock’s elbow.

‘Good night, John’ says Sherlock.

And they’re gone.

 

John puts down the grocery bags he was still carrying. He walks to the window carefully, as if treading on a mine field or chafing savagely. He catches a glimpse of them striding after a taxi like fucking gazelles. Victor holds the door open for Sherlock. Sherlock must have said something funny, and Victor laughs, throwing his head back. They climb in, Sherlock first, then Victor, folding himself in four bloody parts to fit through the door, and the taxi drives into the night.

John tries to swallow on a dry throat. He takes a few deep breaths and slowly, very slowly, opens his fists. His hands are shaking from the effort. He has been clenching them tight. He is still stuck into place, a burning choke in his throat, eyes stinging.

He looks at the grocery bags across the room and considers smashing every bloody thing against the wall. The tin of baked beans would make a fine dent. It might explode as well, and wouldn’t that be fun to clean.

No, no, John Watson. We are grown men, rational men, and we are in control of our own emotions.

And when all else fails, we have a certain phone number on speed dial.

 

It takes John a good half hour before he has gathered himself enough to press it.

One full tone.

‘ _John_.’

‘Mycroft. Do you know a man called Victor Trevor?’

A lengthy pause at the other end of the line.

_‘Anthea will pick you up in fifteen minutes.’_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note: The Wallace box is supposed to be the beetles and bat collection on the mantelpiece of 221B. There is a story behind it, and it's in chapter 9 of part 2 of this series.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner and a show, including a grand exit. Take a bow, John.

 

Sherlock hasn’t quite caught the address Victor indicated to the driver, his pulse beating strongly in his temples, his heart pumping hard, his mouth dry. He tries to focus on the route, maybe predict where it is they might be going -something, anything, to distract his thoughts and calm himself down. He is not in control of this. It seems that, with Victor, he never is.

The last time he found himself in the backseat of a car with him, they had just fled Charles Trevor’s funeral. And Sherlock had been feeling so nervous that day he was very nearly sick. Victor looks just as relaxed and in command as he always did, one arm perched by the window, legs crossed, looking out, the play of lights and shadows of the London streets animating the sharp angles of his face. He doesn’t talk, content apparently with just sitting there and watching the bustle of the city rush by.

Sherlock, however, is shifting in his seat, his legs bouncing, his stomach churning, bursting with questions. The most urgent one right now, though arguably not the most important: why did Victor have to turn up at the flat at all? If all he wanted was to take Sherlock out for dinner, why not drop a bloody phone call? Doesn’t he have a multimillion pound multinational company to run? Just what is he bloody up to? It’s infuriating for a reason he can’t quite fathom. There is an illogical, disproportionate imbalance there he can’t get his head around. And in any case, this line of thought is much safer than continuing to think about how Victor’s body felt when he had him in his arms - not to mention the quite unsettling fact that he has had more physical contact in one day than he’s had in years; two hugs and a dance.

And on that thought, the taxi stops. They climb down, and Sherlock feels Victor’s hand at the small of his back, gently nudging him on. He makes it seem so natural, this easy intimacy between them, as if they did this every day and had done for years. So natural, in fact, that Sherlock has stopped jolting every time Victor touches him.

Surely this can’t be the place? Sherlock was expecting a posh, sleek, minimalistic affair, offering some exotic fusion deconstructed cuisine, the type of place that serves rations that fit a tablespoon. Instead, they are making their way into what appears to be a small French bistro, with a handwritten sign by the door announcing the hearty, unfussy evening specials. Stop trying to predict Victor Trevor, Holmes. You were always rubbish at it.

Sherlock takes one last deep breath before he crosses the threshold, to breathe in some of the second-hand smoke the people at the terrace tables are exhaling. He hopes it helps clear his mind.

The maître shakes hands with Victor and leads them to a quiet corner at the back, by a bay window opening to a bushy, lush patio twinkling with fairy lights. On the table, there is a vase with a white rose and a candle that the maître lights with a suspicious, rather unkind, most unprofessional frown addressed at Sherlock. Well, well, well.

When they sit down, Sherlock notices the slightest wince quickly crossing Victor’s face as his arse touches the wooden seat of the bistro-style chairs. Hm.

The maître takes their order for drinks and Sherlock lets Victor choose the wine. He may store what some may term prodigious amounts of information about grapes, vineyards, bouquets and vintages, but these mean as much to him in terms of taste as sheet music does to a layman. A deaf layman, at that.

Once the maître leaves them, Victor reads his menu. Sherlock lays it aside and fires away.

“You come here with Alex.”

Victor looks up to him, eyes bright, for once unimpressed with his deduction.

“Yes, I noticed the look he gave you. Sorry about that.” He shrugs sheepishly. “They adore him. They must be wondering what am I doing here with a handsome man such as yourself, only a few weeks after he popped the question and I put on the ring.”

Sherlock’s eyes open wide as his brow furrows.

‘Right here. You got engaged right here’ he says, incredulous, and unexpectedly nettled.

Victor shrugs again, apologetic.

“This same table, I bet,” says Sherlock, now fuming.

And why is he so upset? What is it to him where in the world they...? Damn! Must it always be like this around Victor? A whirlwind of thoughts and emotions inside him, filling him to the brim, surging up from god knows where, turning too quickly, too enmeshed in each other to analyse and make any sense of them! Never knowing what in hell it was he was exactly feeling at any given point in time, unable to predict how he would react to Victor’s coming and goings! It used to drive him up the wall, and it would appear, it still does.

Victor’s puppy eyes never did it for him. His crooked, naughty smile, on the other hand, has yet to fail. Still, Sherlock huffs.

“So why bring me here?”

“Because I like it.” He looks guileless, and unflappable.

Well, that simply will not do, will it? Somebody could use a good rattling.

“Does Alex know you are here with me?” says Sherlock, in a casual tone that does not fool Victor for one second. He smells the trap but doesn’t see it yet.

“Yes, of course,” he replies.

“Does he know who I am.” _Here, fishy fishy…_

“Everything there is to know” Victor says, still unruffled.

“So he was marking his territory, then,” says Sherlock, with a crocodile smile.

“Pardon me?”

“I noticed.” says Sherlock, smug. “When you sat down.” And he is being perfectly delicate. So delicate, in fact, that it takes Victor a second to catch up with him.

When he does, he blushes tremendously and covers his face, elbows on the table, shoulders up to his ears. Much, much better, thinks Sherlock, triumphant. And then Victor starts to laugh, the loveliest pink heating his cheeks and neck. It takes everything Sherlock’s got not to laugh with him.

“God, you don’t miss a thing” says Victor, quite unnecessarily. He has himself together again now, not a hair out of place. He returns the stare with humour and a good pinch of mischief. “Yes, he did give me a good seeing to before he sent me on my way.” He eyes Sherlock from under his golden lashes, demure on the surface, devilish underneath. “You know I like it rough” he smirks.

Sherlock flusters, red from head to toe, cheeks and neck burning. _Damn_.

It’s Victor’s turn to look smug, and Sherlock should be snarling, but instead he is thinking how Victor sometimes liked it sweet and gentle, and remembers Victor riding him slow, keeping him just on the brink, whispering in his ear. And his face, his mouth pink, swollen with kissing, his eyes glazed with lust, his taut arse in Sherlock’s hands, his hard cock rubbing on Sherlock’s belly, the noises Victor made as Sherlock came inside him…

The drinks arrive. (Thank god.) Victor goes through the tasting ritual without fussing, mercifully unaware of what was just in Sherlock’s mind -the scale of the teasing he would get for that doesn’t bear imagining. He winks at Sherlock while the maître pours the wine and takes their food orders, the man’s demeanour around Sherlock even more stiff than before - he has probably seen the fits of giggles and the blush on both their faces. He must admit it looks like... well, like the date is going well. The thought makes Sherlock inexplicably uncomfortable. He shifts in his seat and wishes for the maître to give him a third bad look so that he can bark, possibly even bite.

“Why did you come to the flat today?” he snaps in the meantime. “You could have just phoned.”

Victor has a sip, considering his answer, maybe pondering whether or not to lie.

“The truth?” he says at last. Another sip, eyes in his wine. “I wanted to meet John.”

Sherlock crosses his arms and stares.

“Why?”

“Why wouldn’t I? Aren’t you curious about Alex?”

“No” says Sherlock without a thought.

Victor throws him a mock-evil sideways glare, but doesn’t call him out on his bluff. Now, that face is something that never failed to smooth Sherlock’s edges either. How could it. What is the point of being socially inappropriate when Victor never once reacted with the slightest discomfort, or even annoyance. He actually seemed to love Sherlock the obnoxious ass. Surprisingly, it is as refreshing now as it was then.

“It’s not the same thing” says Sherlock after a spell, conscious of how much softer his voice sounds now. “John is not… We are not getting married.”

“You are very close, aren’t you?” says Victor, turning the long-stem glass in his hand, golden liquid dancing.

“Not like that” says Sherlock.

“Like what then.”

Sherlock takes a long draught to avoid having to answer. He has not felt close to John for some time now, but he is not in the mood to call attention to that fact right now - Victor’s attention or his own.

When the food arrives, the conversation simmers down. Sherlock stirs his steaming leek and potato soup while Victor spreads tapenade of different sorts onto an array of crunchy breads, which he eats with relish. Sherlock supposes they are both taking better care of themselves these days. Victor in particular has put on a lot more flesh - he used to be so lean. Sherlock finds his eyes drawn to the unfamiliar bulge of Victor’s well-developed pectoral muscles; unavoidably, he ends up stumbling with his nipples, peeking through the thin material Victor tends to favour for his shirts, then and now too, apparently. Sherlock makes himself look away, and finds Victor’s gaze on him. Damn. Flustering again. Sherlock wants to slap himself. It’s not as if he hasn’t seen any other attractive men since he last saw him. Why can’t he get a grip? _  
_

“I hear you run the company now” says Sherlock, in the least subtle distraction maneuver he has ever attempted.

Victor nods, chewing.

“I’m not as hands-on as my dad was, however.” Some water to chase his mouthful down. “I’m going to live in Norfolk and let the board deal with the day-to-day stuff, and I’ll come to London only for the big stuff, once or twice a month.”

“What happens to the house? Donnithorpe.”

“Mrs. Northam is retiring at the end of this year, and then I will step in and I’ll run the place and the collection myself. This will be my main job.” And he looks excited, his eyes bright.

“Your father would have liked that,” says Sherlock after a spell, making Victor smile and look for a few seconds as a ten-year-old.

“I think he would. And my mother too.”

“What does Alex think?”

Victor’s eyes become rather hazy for a second. Sherlock does not quite manage to resist the urge to snort. Victor doesn’t even notice, he is that far gone into the land of prospective marital bliss.

“He sort of suggested this arrangement. He hated that the company took up so much of my time, and he knew the job didn’t exactly make me happy, so…” He looks moony.

“You have a special smile for him” notes Sherlock. “How _adorable_ ” he jeers.

“Sod off” says Victor grinning, hurling a piece of bread to his face. Sherlock takes if full on the forehead and starts laughing. It feels good. About ten seconds of crumb battle ensues, both turning their heads like naughty little boys to make sure nobody is coming to tell them off.

When the game dies down, it feels as if a heavy weight has been lifted, ten years worth.

“He is very intrigued about you. Alex I mean” says Victor, as they tuck into a heavenly quiche.

“Intrigued? What about? I’m an open book” Sherlock flashes his best lottery girl smile.

“He wonders who is the man that made me swear off relationships for ten years” says Victor, apparently not in the business of issue-skirting tonight.

Sherlock takes a second.

“Is that what you have told him?”

“Not in so many words. But previous boyfriends are the kind of thing couples talk about, and I happen to speak of only one.”

“Is that what couples do, indeed” says Sherlock. “I wouldn’t know.”

Victor smiles with half his mouth.

“Yes, it is quite apparent that John had never heard about me” he says, with intent.

Sherlock looks up.

“Why would he?” He tries to sound as puzzled as he thinks he should feel. But since he knows exactly what Victor is getting at, he fails.

Victor takes a second to assess him, eyes squinting, mouth pursed. And, mercifully, he decides to change the subject.

“So, Sherlock. There is something I want to ask you.”

Sherlock wipes his mouth and puts the serviette down by the plate, considering his dinner quite done.

“Go ahead” he says.

“I want you to come to my wedding.”

Outwardly, Sherlock hasn’t even flinched. Inwardly, he is running for the hills screaming.

“Why?” he manages, calmly.

And Victor keeps his eyes low for this.

“Because there are very few people in this world that are dear to me, and you are one of them.”

A silence.

“I am far from an expert in the finer details of unspoken social conventions” Sherlock says, “but I am quite sure that people do not invite their…”

“…ex-boyfriends,” completes Victor.

“’Thank you. Their ex-boyfriends to their weddings, unless they happen to be marrying them.”

Victor smiles warmly, with a pinch of defiance.

“Well, I am no expert either, but I am people, and I have definitely just invited you to my wedding. And I would like it very much if you did attend.” He harrumphs. “It would mean a lot to me.”

Sherlock slumps on the backrest of the chair, legs crossed at the ankles stretched in front of him, deliberating. _Oh, wait._

“I am not going to be your best man” he warns. He is being very serious, but Victor apparently finds this hilarious.

“Oh, don’t worry” he says, when he is almost done laughing. “We’re doing away with all of that. We’re keeping it simple. Just us, the registrar, friends and family. The only bit of tradition we are sticking with is the flower girls. Alex’s nieces would kill us if we skipped that.”

Well, that is a relief. But one more thing:

“I am not going to play either. Or compose anything. So don’t ask me.”

Victor smiles frankly now, probably because he senses Sherlock slowly yielding -or running out of excuses, take your pick.

“You don’t have to do anything” he tells him, and puts one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, reassuring. “You don’t have to give a speech, or even talk to anyone. You just have to be there.”

Sherlock probes at his teeth with the tip of his tongue.

“Victor, I hate weddings” he says. “You don’t know how much.”

Victor nods.

“Well, I can guess.”

No he can’t. Can he? How can he?

“Can't you just take my word that I wish you well.”

“I know that, you git. I just… We’ve been through so much shit, you and I…”

“That, we have.”

“And now we are alright, and I have Alex, and you have John, and…”

“John and I are not a couple” he snaps. Oh, thinks Sherlock, and almost snorts with derision. So, John’s compulsive disambiguation syndrome it’s catching.

“What are you then” says Victor. Not challenging, asking.

Sherlock looks up to Victor’s eyes. He was not expecting that question.

He could take the usual, well-trodden route. Flatmates. Best friends. Business associates, even. All true. Technically.

The expression on Victor’s face somehow won’t allow it.

“I don’t really know any more” he sighs, finding sincerity quite relieving. And now he does snort. “To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever known.”

Victor scrubs his mouth, pondering. He bites the inside of his cheeks and, when he lets go, he looks as if he has made up his mind about something.

“Mycroft told me that John kissed you” he announces.

Sherlock’s eyes widen in surprise. He has just blurted it out like that, with no warning, leaving Sherlock nowhere to hide.

“How in hell does Mycroft...? No, don’t answer that. When have you talked with Mycroft?” And if Sherlock’s tone was a little sharper, it could cut through bone.

“Two or three times a year, for the last… Oh, I don’t know. Five years? I would have to ask him.”

Sherlock seethes quietly, poisonously.

“He has never mentioned it.”

“No, he wouldn’t have. I asked him not to.”

Hm.

“Why?”

Victor takes his time, and a long drink.

“I was not ready” he says, eyes low. “You had just gotten clean and had started working with Scotland Yard. I was… Well, I was just starting to put myself back together again. My feelings for you were still all over the place. I knew that if I reached any further than that, I would not be able to keep away. And I was of no use to you back then. I don’t think I would have acted with our best interest in mind, and… It just wasn’t the right time. I just wanted to know you were safe, but anything beyond that… it frightened me.”

Sherlock feels a swell in his throat. This idiot with his butter-soft heart. Sherlock had not spared a thought for him back then. He was so far up his own arse he was almost walking around inside out. He considered that he had done the best he could for Victor when he had broken up with him, and after that it was every man for himself. And all this time, this bloody idiot has been going around his life bloody worrying and _caring_ and giving a toss for him, after everything Sherlock has done. He swallows down the burn in his throat.

"Eight years" he says.

Victor raises an eyebrow.

"When I started to do consulting work with Scotland Yard. I've been clean for about ten. Mostly clean." He sighs. “Anyway, in that case you must be up to date with the rest of it” he says, moving on to what he thinks are safer grounds.

“You mean John’s wife and daughter, and Moriarty.”

“Not John’s daughter” he cuts. Not so safe then.

Victor bows down his head.

“Yes, I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

Sherlock is losing his battle. He feels his breathing becoming laboured.

“For a while, we thought, John and I…” he begins, and then he chokes.

“You thought that you would be looking after that little girl together” completes Victor, ever the mind-reader. He reads him better than Mycroft. He always has. He assumes less.

Sherlock nods, his throat thick and lined with broken glass. He still cannot explain why this -she- affects him so much. He had barely even held her…

“I am so sorry” says Victor, reaching over the tablecloth to squeeze his hand. And Sherlock thinks that, if it was anybody else trying to bloody _comfort_ him with a pointless gesture like that, he would shrug them off and lash out viciously. But he finds himself not shrugging Victor off. Instead he turns his palm upwards and they are now holding hands. It feels more right than it should.

After a quick squeeze of his own, Sherlock lets go.

“Well, I am glad that I don’t have to catch you up on all that bore, but I am still going to kill Mycroft.”

Victor smiles.

“Don’t be silly. He has only ever just done what he thought was the best for you.”

“Well, he consistently manages to stick his foot right in it, does he not?” A meaningful stare. Victor nods. He has caught his drift then.

“Be that as it may,” he says, “he loves you more than the stick up his skinny, little, civil-serving arse will let him express.”

Sherlock smirks in spite of himself. Then he covers his face, and there is a possibility that he has turned slightly green.

“God, don’t remind me…”

Victor raises an eyebrow, playful.

“Sherlock Holmes, you are still not over me and your brother? Seriously? After all this bloody time?”

“I am not and I never will be” he declares.

Victor laughs with delight, his whole face and body involved in the action.

“He is a sexy fuck, your brother, under all that sodding tweed.” He has the devil in his eye now. “Not that I dislike tweed, far from it, but it’s rather scratchy when you rub against it naked.”

“Good god, no. Shut up. I beg you.”

Victor laughs some more. When he stops, he has a piercing look in his eye.

“So John did kiss you” he says, retaking it where Sherlock had been hoping they had left it for good.

Except he finds himself quite happy that they actually haven’t.

“Yes, he did.” All out, Holmes. “But it was obviously a mistake and he regrets it immensely.” Sarcasm. Bitter. Sore. _Fuck_.

“Why do you think he regrets it?”

“Well, to start with, there hasn’t been a repeat. And he won’t hear one word about it. He refuses to talk about it or hear me out.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Sherlock huffs.

“People do odd things under stress. Maybe it did not mean what I... what I thought it meant. Or maybe it is exactly what it seems, but he does not want to pursue that angle with me because I’m not of the female persuasion. Or because he knows what a rotten boyfriend I’d make. God knows I’m a rotten flatmate.” Sherlock scrubs his face hard, almost scratching, and exhales heavily. He could just explode with the frustration he has been hoarding for six months now, living on the tip of a needle, spinning. He snorts. “Maybe he does not want to ruin our friendship." And how sarcastic, how sour this last one came out. "I don’t have a bloody clue. It’s driving me up the wall, not knowing” he confesses.

Victor sips at his drink, thoughtful.

“What did you do when he kissed you?” he asks, just like that.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was so… I wasn’t expecting it at all.”

A pause.

“Did you like it?”

A surge of something iced and blazing turns in his chest.

“For god’s sake, Victor, I don’t know. It was… There was an explosion. I don’t-…”

“Do you want him?”

Now Sherlock’s composure is well and truly gone. He gapes like a fish out of water for a while.

“So you do” says Victor. He rubs the stubble on his chin, studying Sherlock’s face, assessing him. “Hm.”

 

*

John should have known to brace himself when, instead of Mycroft’s office or his club or some mysterious abandoned building half in ruins, Anthea had dropped him in front of a bar. The last time he had had coffee with Mycroft, it was raining cats and dogs and Irene Adler was dead.

Well, Victor Fucking Trevor is alive and fucking kicking, but John bets it’s all very fucking appropriate and pleasingly symmetrical in Mycroft’s twisted mind.

The Mycroft-mobile is driving them now to the restaurant, at John’s -very loud, not at all polite- request. His leg is bouncing, his teeth clenched and his fingers tapping on his knee as they navigate green, amber and red lights across half the bloody town. Mycroft by his side is comfortably reclined on the leather seat -or at least he looks comfortable, even though his spine is, as always, straight as a lampost-, legs crossed with one ankle resting on one knee, toying with the handle of his umbrella. John has pretty much had it today with tall, posh, imperturbable City men, so whenever he casts a glance over to Mycroft, it’s through squinted eyes and with a twisted lip. If he was a dog, he would be showing a fang.

It has been a true trial of endurance for John to sit more or less still for the duration of his forty-five minute chat with Mycroft. Not that John has chatted much, he has mainly just listened, while allowing a swell of white-hot fury rise and bubble inside him as the story progressed.

Mycroft’s account makes only half sense to John at the moment. Admittedly, it was getting him more and more riled up, and there is a chance that he has missed entire passages, while his brain was getting thickly fogged up by a deaf-dumb-blind surge of rage. He has derived basically one notion out of what he has been told: that Sherlock and Victor had broken up, and Sherlock had started doing heroin immediately after.

What John definitely doesn’t get is why Mycroft has not started flailing and rounding up a team of special forces the moment he has been told that his little brother had gone out with the same man he once almost destroyed himself for. Can’t he not fucking _see_? The fucker is back, looking like god knows what the fuck, and he is engaged, and _still_ flirting out of his fucking elbows, and has fucking taken Sherlock out after devouring him with his eyes, and fuck, Mycroft! Panic a little! Fucking danger night, remember?

And oh, he knows the fucking type, John does. He only needed to hear a few key concepts out of Mycroft’s mouth and now he has Victor perfectly sussed out. Money, spoiled brat, daddy issues, drug problems. It’s sodding textbook. Those posh asswipes, those ‘poor rich kids’. _Fuck them_. If he thinks he can just whisk in, and toy with Sherlock, and rub their noses in his perfect life...

 _‘No, John, Sherlock left Victor, not the other way around.’_ Yes, well, Mycroft, first of all, how do you know what went on before that? And second, if it was him, John, in Victor’s shoes at the time, they would have had to peel him off Sherlock’s door and put a leash on him to try and keep him away. He would have never, _ever_ , just gone to fucking America, leaving Sherlock to his own miserable devices, no matter what! And yes, Mycroft, whatever, I heard that the first time. Victor’s depression, recovering from drug addiction, and Sherlock very, very unwell but… But the bloody bastard had just left him there to fucking die, Mycroft. He had left for a fucking penthouse with Central Park views, while Sherlock had spent the following five years in the bloody gutter!

He is not going to let that happen a second time. Mycroft can say whatever he wants. He will go there and take Sherlock home safe. It won’t win him any popularity contests, and Sherlock’s sulk could very well last for a whole football league, but he’ll-… he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.

Whatever happens, he must prevent this thing from, ehm, escalating. If that bastard breaks Sherlock’s heart again, he swears to god he will…

The other thoughts - the low humdrum that feels pretty much as a rumble in the pit of his stomach-  make their presence known, as John’s fury simmers down to white noise.

_Sherlock is gay._

_Sherlock is gay and that fuck was his lover._

_Sherlock has had sex._

_Sherlock fucking._

_Sherlock naked in that fuck’s arms. That pretty fuck’s arms._

_Sherlock making love with that fucker._

He can’t breathe. He wants to. He can’t.

_The purple shirt, strewn across the floor. A bed unmade. The noises._

Jesus Christ, _are we fucking there yet._

 

The car pulls up. John stumbles out, rushing for the door. He hears Mycroft calling behind him. John doesn’t even turn.

There they are, in that fucking cosy spot in the corner, a fucking living olive tree in a pot screening them, a fucking white rose and a fucking candle on the table. They are leaning towards each other, talking confidentially.

John sees red.

Victor spots him first. He reclines back.

“Speak of the devil” he says.

Sherlock turns to face John.

“John? What are you doing h… Mycroft?!”

Only then does John realise that Mycroft is right behind him. He applies a gentle but unyielding pressure to John’s arm, and John moves aside. He has what John thinks it’s his hypocritical smirk on, but upon closer examination, that smile actually looks genuine. What…?

“Good evening, Victor” says The British Government, with more colour on his cheeks that John has ever seen there since he’s known him. _What…?_

Victor smiles back, fondly.

“Mycroft.” His voice silken. Can this bastard actually breathe without fucking flirting?

“Sherlock, may I have a word with you?” says big brother, with his big brother face on.

Sherlock is fuming. He turns to Victor, who shrugs with a little grin. Permission, the fucker has just granted Sherlock _permission_.

Sherlock pushes his chair back with an almighty shriek and walks pass John without so much as a look. It bloody _stings_. Mycroft follows after.

 

Alone with Victor now.

“John” he says. “Would you like to sit down? They may be a while. There is still some wine left.” The fucking kind smile, the fucking dimples. John would like to grab his fucking curls and rip them clean off his skull. He claws his hands, his face twitching with contained fury.

Calm the fuck down, John Watson.

“Did you get him into drugs?” he hurls, voice raspy with anger. Mycroft hasn’t said that, but it fucking _figures_.

Victor arches his eyebrows, swallows his sip of water.

“Where did you get that from?”

“Did you?” _Oh no, don't give me that. You are not getting away from this with that innocent face._ Come the fuck on, twenty-year-old party animal druggy meets inexperienced, introverted, socially awkward, tortured genius? _Of course_ it was him who fucking got Sherlock into all that shit!

Victor puts his glass down, gestures to the waiter for the bill. Cool as a cucumber, legs crossed, shoulders relaxed, a knowing look in his eyes John does not know what it’s about but already fucking hates.

“Why don’t you ask him?” he says, after letting John stew in it for thirty long seconds.

“I’m asking _you_ ” says John, voice trembling with animosity.

“Whatever gave you that impression?”

He snorts. _Oh, I know the likes of you_ , he doesn’t say (probably because even he realises this is a sentence one usually encounters in the vicinity of a ‘Guv’nor’.)

“ _Answer me_ ” he says instead, with a scratching whisper.

Victor fixes him with his clear, unwavering eyes.

“Is that the reason you give yourself?” he asks.

“What? For what?” John’s eyes flutter, his puzzlement plain on his face amidst the simmering fury.

“For how much you hate me right now.”

John shows teeth. _What the fuck does that mean._ Victor holds his stare, eyes still on him like a lizard’s, until John needs to look down. _Fuck_.

Victor whips his wallet out, leaves a few notes on the table, stands up (and up, and up, and up…), tugs at his jacket once or twice to tidy it up, and casts one more look John’s way from his high vantage point.

“You really need to talk with Sherlock” he says. And he strides away. And stride he can, with those never-fucking-ending legs.

One minute later -one excruciatingly long minute later, in which every pair of eyes in the room is aimed at him-, John walks out, panting as if he’d just run a mile. 

*

Whatever Mycroft and Sherlock were discussing, they are now standing silently in front of each other, noses one inch away, trying to bore a hole into each other’s skull with their glares. And Victor is standing there, arms crossed, leaning against the wall, and fixes John with his eyes again when he notices him. It’s less an aggressive stare than a curious one, but it makes John’s fists clench just the same, or probably more for it. Because even after it all, Victor does not hate him. What else must a man do to get under that sodding posh Buddha’s skin?

Sherlock turns to John, furious.

“You phoned him?” he accuses.

John tries to stand his ground, painfully self-conscious in his jumper and cords among three bloody skyscrapers in bespoke suits.

“Of course I bloody did” he owns, chin up.

Sherlock throws him a basilisk’s stare. He has never had one of those aimed at him. He guesses it’s terrifying, but more than anything, it bloody hurts.

Sherlock extends a hand to Victor, who takes it.

“Let’s get out of here, Victor,” he says, voice still seething with slow burning outrage.

They walk away, and right at the corner they stop a taxi and climb in.

 

_Christ, no._

 

“I do have Victor’s address in town, John, if you want to take this further” says Mycroft, just on this side of sarcastic.

John glares at him, all his fury and pain and confusion converging onto the only one left there to take it. And yet Mycroft does not so much as wince.

John storms off, huffing and puffing, before he makes everything a hundred times more entertaining for Mycroft by starting to cry.

 

It’s only after a dozen steps when he remembers that he got there in the Mycroft-mobile, and that he was so riled up when he left, he forgot to take his wallet or his goddamned phone, and even his keys.

 _Bollocks_.

Where the fuck is he. He doesn’t even have so much as a couple of quid for the tube.

 _Sweaty, hairy, stinky bollocks._ He will have to bloody walk across half the city and then wake Mrs. Hudson up.

He clenches his fists and very nearly utters a roar. Fucking Victor Trevor!

 

*

Mycroft twirls his umbrella twice with a practiced flick of the wrist, and purses his mouth.

Well, John is not coming back, is he? His pride. A man like him does not take the grand exit option and come back asking for a ride one minute later. It is to be expected, but Mycroft is still rather disappointed. He does prefer a practical mind above pointless displays of emotion and stupidity, and he lives for the day when somebody will actually manage to surprise him on that account. _People_.

He gets into the car. He told John what he needed to hear. Not one word was a lie and he hid nothing away; it is all in the emphasis. And it had worked beautifully. There are risks to this course of action, indeed, but he hopes they are calculated ones.

Though Victor looked bloody gorgeous.

He _does_ wonder. Sherlock, Sherlock…

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Selfie, and thank you Allons-y Girl. Your input this time was even more valuable than ever, not to mention your real-life support. I love you girls!
> 
> A couple of notes:
> 
> 1\. For the references about Charles Trevor's funeral, it's in part 3 of this series.  
> 2\. YES THEY DID, MYCROFT AND VICTOR, YES. Part 1. And for how Sherlock dealt with it, most of Part 2.  
> 3\. Oh, by the way. In this fic, Donnithorpe is a manor house turned art museum the Trevor family owns in Norfolk, where Victor takes Sherlock for a few weeks one summer (and where most of Part 2 takes place.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Sherlock under a tree, r-e-m-i-n-i-s-c-i-n-g...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Cloisteredself, for the hard work you put into helping out with this, in spite of your busy life. Your input is invaluable. And thank you Allons-y-girl, for your thoughts and guidance, gut-checks and overall support. And thank you both for being my friends. I love you guys.
> 
> Oh, the rating has changed, did you notice? And there's also a couple more tags... 
> 
> (runs and hides behind a rock)

 

“Don’t be so nervous, Sherlock” says Victor, his voice a silken purr, as he fumbles with his keys to open the door.

“I’m not nervous. Why should I be nervous?” He utters this without a single pause, after practically climbing up the walls in the taxi. Victor grins out of the corner of his mouth, and generously lets it go.

“Good. Come on in then.”

Sherlock follows him into the narrow, cramped hall, staircase to the left, with shoes on the steps, corridor ahead, a few layers of jackets and coats piling up on the hooks by the door, unsorted mail and newspapers in a basket on the floor.

“What happened to the loft?” says Sherlock, walking after Victor down the corridor. This place couldn’t be more different from the swanky, ultra-modern apartment by the riverside where Victor lived the last time they saw each other.

“Sold it” says Victor, leading him into the sitting room. “Turns out I hated it. I only found out when I came back from New York and actually tried to live in it. Drink?”

“You got this with Alex” says Sherlock abruptly.

Victor smiles _that_ smile, the Alex smile, closed lips, tiny, dimples on. Combined with that glint in his eyes, it makes him look like a twelve-year-old. A twelve-year-old with his first crush. Sherlock pulls a face.

“Wine ok?” throws Victor over his shoulder, impervious, making for the next room, which must be the kitchen.

Sherlock’s throat is dry, indeed, and his pulse is quickened, and he’s like a cat in a new place, edgy and jumpy. There is a hot, sour tasting sensation in his belly. If it goes up, he is going to be sick. If it goes down… _“Don’t be so nervous.”_ His mind keeps going back to the last time they were together in that loft. How upset Victor was, how angry. A fulminating blow job on a leather sofa that got Sherlock off in less than two minutes. Ah, damn it. So it would appear that the hot sensation will be heading _down_.

Distraction. Any distraction. Sherlock does a quick spin on himself. Photographs on the walls, on the shelves, on the mantelpiece, dozens of them. Let’s see. Charles and Norah Trevor with cheeky, pink-faced little Victor, a halo of blond curls, the exact same smile. Present-day Victor with —it must be Alex, of course. As tall as Victor, if not taller, and much, much broader. Long blond hair, square jaw, perfect white teeth, muscular, league-of-his-own handsome. Well, he didn’t expect less from Victor; he is not a man to simply settle —rather, he upgrades. He looks familiar. Sherlock wonders if he is an actor in one of John’s soaps.

Judging by the photos, the golden couple has done extensive traveling: there are a multitude of images of the two of them posing with sunny smiles against a backdrop of exotic landscapes and architecture, and many on tropical paradises, with straw hats, colourful swimming trunks, bright suntans and no shirts, smiling, laughing, hugging, kissing. And still more photographs of the two of them, this time with kittens, or on a sailboat, or covered in blond little boys and girls —the nieces and nephews, presumably—, and last but not least, several of Victor alone, unaware of the camera, and looking remarkably beautiful, taken by somebody who has a good eye for light and composition and can’t get enough of him. Right then, so amateur photographer, not without talent, and a romantic; more details to add to the portrait of Alex he is trying to create in his mind —without asking directly, because he would rather die than do that.

And these must be the in-laws, all golden as well, handsome, wholesome, outdoorsy-looking kind of people.

Wait.

He picks up a photo of Alex —shirtless again, and magnificent, damn him—, two blonde girls at each side, obviously his sisters. They are at the beach, each holding a surfboard.

Sherlock’s mind clicks just as Victor appears from the kitchen with the drinks. He has noticed what Sherlock is staring at, because he looks a bit sheepish, catching his bottom lip under the top, looking like a little boy expecting a scolding, when Sherlock glances up to him.

“Yes, he is” says Victor.

“The surfer hunk at the beach. The one who wanted you to have his phone number no matter what. The one we fought about.” Sherlock shakes his head in dismay. “How I hate being right all the time” he huffs.

Victor laughs, and damned if he doesn’t look relieved.

“Nonsense. You love it” he says, nudging at Sherlock’s ribs with an elbow.

“Well, you would like it, too, if it happened to you” accepts Sherlock, still feeling irked. “So, he was local, just as I said, and you had no problems finding him again, just as I said.” Alright, that came out embarrassingly pissy.

Victor smiles _that_ smile.

“Not exactly. Yes, he is from Norfolk, but it actually took more than ten years for us to meet again, and it was quite a coincidence that we did bump into each other. He is convinced it’s fate.” He beams, radiant. Sherlock does an eye roll.

“I thought he was not your type?” he jabs, because apparently he is ten again and he can’t just let it drop.

“Oh, he isn’t.” Victor smirks now, impish. “He is very nice, and sweet, and very easy to live with. So no, not my type at all.” He holds the glasses up. “I brought red.”

Sherlock frowns, casting his eyes down, and purses his mouth.

“Sorry” says Victor. “I meant it as a joke.” He nudges him again, a gentle touch this time.

“It’s alright. I deserve it.”

“No, you don’t” says Victor, jovial, keeping it light. “Let’s sit down.”

Sherlock takes the armchair, Victor the sofa. It must be his spot. While he was in the kitchen he has lost the jacket and he has undone the top buttons of his shirt. Sherlock’s eyes are drawn to the concavity at the base of his neck, as they always were. He should look away, but he doesn’t. The lanky, straggly, lithe young boy he used to know goes to the gym a lot now, gets plenty of sunshine, and probably has stopped skipping meals. And Sherlock is intensely curious, for lack of a better word -or at least a word he might be willing to own up to-, about how different he must look, how different he must feel, since the last time he, hm, saw him.

He lists as well, among the feelings he can pick out and identify out of the tangled mess swirling inside him, annoyance, spite and anger -the kind of anger that leads a man who has deprived himself of human touch for ten years -fifteen really-, and who has some _unresolved issues_ with his current flatmate, and five years of pent up sexual frustration to contend with, to rip his former boyfriend’s clothes off and do him _right there and then_ in his living room. So perhaps coming here tonight wasn’t the best idea after all. It’s not like he _enjoys_ having to suppress and swallow the demands of his body.

“What are we doing here, Sherlock?” asks Victor, with that velvety, warm, rumbling voice of his. He does not comment on Sherlock’s bouncy legs (feet actually lifting off the floor) or Sherlock’s fingers tapping the leather arms of his seat.

“Trying to avoid a prison sentence for fratricide. And flatmatecide. With Moriarty gone, I don’t think I would get another reprieve.”

Victor chuckles.

“I’m not sure you’ve quite dodged the flatmatecide thing” he says, with a wink. “John looked quite pale when we left. And if seeing us leave together didn’t kill him, stewing on it now just might.”

Sherlock’s anger spikes up.

“That’s not my problem” he grunts. “He can think whatever he likes.”

Victor gives him a crooked, mischievous grin.

“He is thinking about you and me, in a bed, naked, fucking.” A long stare and a sip of his wine. “Though not necessarily in a bed.”

“Is he?” snaps Sherlock, showing some fang, hoping it distracts from his fluster. “Well, good for him. I hope he enjoys it.”

Victor laughs.

“I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is the right word.”

Sherlock could gladly snarl something back about that. Because isn’t it _rich_. John has some bloody nerve being jealous for no bloody reason about someone he doesn’t even _want_. Because how many chances have there been that John hasn’t taken, how many? How much clearer can Sherlock make it for him? And yet Sherlock has swallowed down every rejection and moved on, every single time, for… God, for what. Because he can’t bloody help himself, that’s why. Because he would do anything not to lose him. He even tried to be happy for him when… when he got married. And now it turns out that Sherlock has a friend, one friend, _one_ , and John will even begrudge him that, and try to bloody ruin it from him! For no reason, with no purpose! Just because he can’t stand that there might be someone in the universe who likes him!

Sherlock becomes aware then of just how much his grimace of spitefulness has scrunched up his lip, and tries, really tries, to smooth it out and reel himself back to a more civil mental state.

“What did you two talk about?” he asks. “It took you long enough to come out of the restaurant.”

Victor bites the inside of his cheeks, deliberating. For a minute he has the gravity of the messenger entrusted with delivering the bad news.

“He believes it was me who got you into drugs.”

Sherlock casts a long, long glare his way, with a faint grimace on his face that, were it not so bitter, would pass for a smile.

“Well, that’s John for you” he huffs. “Rushing in to save poor old silly Sherlock from himself, while keeping a permanently loaded gun in his drawer, just in case he feels like blowing his brains out that day.” He shakes his head heavily, his expression sour enough to curdle milk.

“Does he do that?” says Victor softly. “Keep a gun in his drawer.”

“Yes, he does” says Sherlock, his tone almost cheerful, cutting all the more deeper for it. “Obviously all I have done, and all I am doing every day is not enough to make him want to live.”  A long silence in which Sherlock is almost choking with self-loathing. He plays with the glass in his hands.

Victor keeps his gaze unwaveringly fixed on Sherlock, his attention pulling the words out of him as surely as if they were tied to a thread that he was winding up in his hands.

“But I’m the one who needs the nanny” continues Sherlock, sarcastic. “Well, I am a child after all, am I not? He is forever having to explain grown-up emotions to me. Hell, he is forever explaining human emotions to me, because it’s likely that I haven’t got any.” He snorts. “What would I do without him.”  He raises his glass in a mockery of a toast and drinks it all down.

Victor looks at Sherlock quietly, his expression full of compassion.

“He will leave” says Sherlock then, all the snark gone from his voice. “Or kill himself, or who knows what. And I haven’t the faintest what to do. And he won’t even hear me.”

Victor considers that for a moment, always so thoughtful.

“What would you say” he asks very softly, “if you could.”

Sherlock slumps against the backrest of the armchair and lets his eyes fall shut tiredly for a moment, feeling exhausted, hollowed from the inside out.

“I haven’t got a clue” he says.

Victor nestles deeper in the plump cushions of the sofa, eyes wandering around the ceiling, pondering.

“I have never told you this,” he says at last, “but when we first met, I could not figure you out. One day I thought you were attracted to me, and the next I thought I was boring you out of your mind. I spent a long time trying to work out your plan, because I was quite convinced that you had one. ‘Mixed signals’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. You were indecipherable. I must admit I often thought you were a manipulative twat. I still liked you though.”

“Is there a point to this or are you just reminiscing” says Sherlock wearily, not in the mood to hear any of this.

Victor smiles politely, immune to snark and interruptions.

“Then we had sex,” he continues, “and I got to see you with your walls down. And I realised that you did not have a clue either, that you were just as confused about your own feelings as I was. That there was no plan. And once I realised that, everything became so much clearer, ironically.” He smiles. “When we were fucking, I did not have to second-guess your actions or your words. Your feelings came through clearly as if through glass. Even if you could not put a name to what you were feeling, or categorise it, or isolate it, or whatever it is you liked to do with the stuff happening in your brain before you could come to terms with it, I could _see_ you.”

Sherlock shifts in his seat. He has a few months worth of vividly detailed sensory memories stored under lock and key in a forgotten wing of his mind. But all it took was Victor walking into his life again for them to burst out and start scampering all over the place like mad ferrets, sticking their cold little noses everywhere, disturbing everything, turning the whole place upside down. Indeed, Sherlock finds himself distracted and quite flustered by what he has just heard Victor say. There’s also the issue of his voice on top of that, of course, but _focus_ , Holmes, focus already.

“What are you trying to say?” he says, after what must have come out as a dramatic pause.

Victor beams, a benevolent god of wisdom.

“He does not know how you feel, Sherlock,” he says then, since the implicit way is not cutting it.

Sherlock’s brow knits tight.

“How can he not know?”

Victor grins fondly. He stands up, picks up the empty glasses, and before making his way to the kitchen he stoops to press a long kiss on Sherlock’s head, with his eyes shut.

 

*

In the kitchen, Victor turns on the kettle and gets a couple of tea bags and the milk. In the cupboard, the stylish, plain white mugs he used to have in the loft are mixed with the novelty mugs Alex buys as souvenirs wherever they go, flashy, cartoonish, often clunky and impractical, and full of memories.

The kettle starts bubbling and Victor takes a deep breath. His hand is shaking slightly.

All he ever wanted when he was with Sherlock was to take care of him, ease off his pain, smooth out the roughness, make him feel loved. Because Sherlock was starving for it. He sighs deeply. He is overcome by the memory of Sherlock clinging on to him like a drowning man, wrapping around him like an octopus, burrowing into the arch of Victor’s body in his sleep. And if the rush inside Victor’s chest brought upon by these memories is not exactly what he used to feel back in the day, it certainly resembles it enough to shake him.

He is the one to burrow into the welcoming arch of his man’s body now. He is the one taken care of; and isn’t Alex good at smoothing every rough patch with those big hands of his. For a moment he misses him so much his throat tightens. Which is ridiculous, since he saw him only yesterday, but there you go.

The kettle whistles urgently. Victor pushes aside the Tardis mug and the one with the painted trolls, and reaches for two plain white ones.

*

 

Victor did not notice Sherlock watching him as he walked away into the kitchen, so tall and elegant, a graceful column of flowing water. The exact opposite of John. Little John, stout, strong, meant to hold back the storm, while Victor is built to weave through it, dance with it, charm it.

Sherlock buries his face in his hands and scrubs hard enough to mark. He huffs heavily. He is a mess. A blushing, whipped up mess, with an undercurrent of anger crepitating just beneath his skin.

He hears the kettle bubbling.

_“John does not know how you feel, Sherlock.”_

That’s absurd. Of course he does. Sherlock has all but shouted it from the rooftops. Correction: he _has_ shouted it from a rooftop, in his own way. He has died for John and he has lived for John. He would give everything for John. Damn, he already has.

_(But it’s not all about giving, is it, brother dear? Surely one must also take.)_

_Damn, Mycroft, take what? I take the awful television he watches, his bad puns, his dismal Sunday roast, his permanent grumpy mood, his..._

…

Oh.

_“What did you do when he kissed you?”_

_Oh_.

 

The kettle whistles.

*

 

Victor returns with some tea. Sherlock watches him persistently as he leaves one of the mugs on the side table by Sherlock's armchair, before plopping down again in his spot on the sofa. His expression is not light and jovial as it was, he looks troubled somehow, affected. Sherlock is transported for a second to the last time they were together, when Victor had just lost his father and was in the depths of an untreated depression. The memory of what they did that day in Victor’s bed follows right after, and the sudden plunging sensation in his belly must be his organs rearranging themselves upside down. _Great_. He swallows.

“Did you ever think I was… cold? Unfeeling? A machine?” says Sherlock, his eyes averted from Victor.

“No” he answers without hesitation.

“Never?” Now Sherlock does look up.

“The night we met, when we were dancing,” says Victor, “you trembled every time I touched you.” A little smirk tugs at the corner of Victor’s lips, at the sight of Sherlock’s flushing cheeks. “And the first time we had sex, all I had to do was look at you and you were squirming.”

Sherlock clears his throat, looking away.

“I remember.” Damn the mad ferrets.

Victor smiles. Sherlock almost smiles as well.

“But that’s not what I meant” says Sherlock then.

Victor sighs, deliberating.

“I always thought there was a heart there somewhere. We all have one. Yes, even you. I thought I was the one meant to find it. It was worth the try.” A sad smile as he looks away.

Sherlock’s eyes flicker.

“You did.” Harrumph. “Find it.”

Victor keeps smiling without his eyes really into it.

“That’s good to hear” he says anyway.

Sherlock nurses his tea, still too hot to drink even for him with his lead-lined throat.

“I was so confused” he says after a moment. “My brain kept telling me I hated people touching me, but my body…” He takes a deep breath. “I was so ignorant. That first time... I did not know what was going to happen. I did not know what I wanted. I thought you would fuck me. I was terrified. Then you didn’t, and it confused me even more.”

Victor is stirring his tea slowly, eyes low. Sherlock could swear his breathing is more superficial now, and perhaps a bit quicker.

_Well, well, well._

“The second time…” Sherlock carries on, partly because it feels good to tell, partly because of the look on Victor's face, “I had done some research, and I had given it a lot of thought, and I watched you when I was doing it to you, so I suppose I could have guessed, but as you were…” He struggles. Well, chasing a ferret tends indeed to make it go even crazier. At the moment they’re all wreaking havoc just under his navel. Sherlock gathers himself, barely. “When you went down on me, I just had not imagined how it would feel, that it would feel like that. And your fingers…”

Victor meets his stare. Sherlock cannot tell for sure from this distance, but he would put money on Victor’s pupils being slightly dilated.

_You and me, in a bed, naked, fucking._

John could be sitting in his armchair right now, furious, jealous, _hard_.

Sherlock licks his lips. There’s a tug at his crotch.

“I understood everything then” he continues. “What I wanted from you. What I had wanted since the second I saw you.”

“Is there a point to this or are you just reminiscing” cuts Victor, his voice a gravelly rasp.

Sherlock’s mouth curves into an impish smirk. After all this time, even with the hot surfer hunk, he’s got him. He has Victor. Victor who could have anyone, and usually did. Victor who towered above all like an Olympian god. Victor who drove him mad with his mouth and wrecked him to pieces with his cock. Victor who knew Sherlock’s body better than himself. Victor with his golden, neverending body sprawled all over the bed, squirming and moaning and begging for him, thirsty for him. Victor’s velvety, hot hot voice calling his name again and again as he came undone under Sherlock’s touch. Victor who could have anyone, and yet wanted him. _Wants_ him.

Victor has put the tea down and has his hands on his thighs. His mouth is slightly parted, his knees splayed. Sherlock feels his own heart in his ears, in his throat.

_He is thinking of you and me, in a bed, naked, fucking._

The most maddening whirlwind of spite, hunger and arousal is spinning inside him.

_Well, obviously so am I._

“I remember your face when you were close.” Sherlock pins Victor down with a scorching glare and lowers his voice an octave, and there’s his answer. “I studied you. When I had already come and you were still fucking me, I observed you. I looked for the little signs in your face I had come to recognise.” A well-timed pause that allows him to hear Victor’s slight gasp.

Sherlock smirks some more.

They bore into each other’s eyes.

Victor’s hands have slid up, inching closer to his crotch. It’s probably an unconscious gesture. Sherlock sips at his boiling tea —his throat is so dry—, his eyes never once leaving Victor’s. He speaks slowly next, letting the words fill his mouth, his voice deep, thrumming.

“I remember the way you sound when you’re coming. I remember the way you smell. Every variation of your smell. I store them in the room I keep for you. It looks like my dorm room. All your smells are there. Fresh from the shower, different if it was a morning or an evening one, and different if you had had a shave or not. Sweat —from heat, from exercise, from sex. Your smell if you had been lying in the sun on the green, or at the beach. Your smell first thing in the morning, after sleep. My own smell in your mouth. The smell of your cock, before coming, and after.”

Victor shuffles in his seat.

Sherlock moves to kill, wolfish grin on his face. “I love the way you smell.”

For the very first time in his life, Victor forfeits the staring contest and looks away first. He is by all intents and purposes mightily aroused now. If all the minute tell-tale signs were not enough, the prominent semi he is not bothering to hide would give him away anyhow.

When he speaks again, he does it with pause, choosing his words.

“Before I left,” he says, his voice husky, deadly, “Alex asked me what I would do if the situation arose.” His eyes are still low. “I told him…” He swallows. “I told him I wasn’t sure I could turn you down. He knows how it went down between us, and that it did not end on my own terms. That it was not because I… because I wasn’t interested anymore. You know what he told me?”

 _Now_ he looks up at Sherlock. It feels sudden, like a slap.

“He told me to get it out of my system.”

Sherlock’s turn to swallow dry. A flurry of needles under his skin.

“Can you imagine John saying the same thing?” says Victor.

Sherlock’s upper lip curls in a snarl. That does it. He walks towards Victor, feline, and looms above him. Victor is looking up, his long throat exposed. _Ten bloody years._ Sherlock kneels in front of him, between his legs, his stare never once leaving Victor’s eyes, and he slowly runs the palm of his hands along the inside of Victor’s thighs, up, down, up, down.

“So do it” he mutters. His voice is a panther’s purr. His expression, fierce. “Get it out of your system.”

Victor tangles his fingers in Sherlock’s hair and pulls. Sherlock groans, his eyes flutter shut. Ah, of course. Of course Victor remembers which buttons to push to tear him apart. His heart  thumps harder, his cock throbs.

 _Guess what, Victor,_ he thinks, his gaze caressing Victor’s neck, _so do I._

But with that very hand on Sherlock’s curls, Victor is keeping him away. Sherlock stares straight into his eyes and dares him. Victor’s breath hitches. 

Sherlock pushes against his hand. Victor can resist if he wants. All he has to do is push back. Sherlock rubs his face in Victor’s hard, flat stomach. His hands slide upwards towards Victor’s crotch. Victor is not pushing him off. His fingers are clawed on Sherlock’s head and they are raking hard. Sherlock grumbles, and he nuzzles at Victor’s erection, mouthing it through his clothes, feeling it hardening up under his touch.

“You’re so hard” he groans low and deep, his hands firmly holding Victor’s hips, fixing him there.

“Sherlock…” mutters Victor, just his name, an awed whisper.

“You want me” says Sherlock, his hot breath on Victor’s clothed cock.

Victor gasps sharply when he feels teeth press gently on him.

“You want me” repeats Sherlock.

“I do want you” says Victor, breathless.

“So fuck me” rumbles Sherlock, one hand climbing up to rub Victor’s hardened nipple through his shirt.

“God…” sighs Victor.

Sherlock rises to his knees and kneads Victor’s taut, smooth throat with his lips. Victor’s grip of his hair tightens, telling him this hasn’t changed either. Sherlock’s hand grapples for Victor’s hard cock.

“Fuck me” whispers Sherlock right against Victor’s ear.

He crushes their mouths together, and when Victor kisses him back Sherlock moans, melting, a surge of heat so intense he feels a shiver. Now it’s Victor’s mouth right on his ear, his tongue. Sherlock whimpers, his crotch clenches, and he could come just from this, and very bloody quickly. He ruts the sofa hearing Victor panting against his neck.

“Fuck me” he begs. “I want you. I need you.”

Victor stops kissing him. He pushes him away, panting. Sherlock frowns, confused.

“Sherlock…” breathes Victor, his lips pink, eyes glazed, skin flush, hair disheveled, never more beautiful. He shakes his head heavily, trying to slow down his breathing. “Go home” he says. “Talk to John. Make him listen. You know what to say now.”

Sherlock’s heart is beating so hard his whole upper body seems to be shaking with it. He trembles, shaken as if he had been woken up from a nice dream with a bucket of cold water.

“What?” he snaps.

“It’s not me you want” says Victor tiredly.

“Yes it is. I want you” he retorts stubbornly. Isn’t it bleeding obvious? His fly is about to burst.

Victor smiles sadly and shoves him off.

Sherlock is blanked, shocked. He gets to his feet slowly, ruffling his hair in perplexity.

“Go on” says Victor, with a tiny smile. “Just go.”

 

Sherlock walks backwards to the door. He grabs his coat from the top of the chair where it’s hanging and rushes out, striding down the corridor, not sure if he is furious, shaken, scared or excited. He slams the door on his way out. He is running so fast he outpaces several cabs before he calms down enough to jump into one.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How does the saying go? 'Assume' made an ass of u and me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (author in safe undisclosed location. Don't bother trying to find me. I've got dogs. And moats. With crocodiles in them. And maybe even zombies. Stay away. I'll call the police. And my mom. And I've got sharks with lasers on their heads.)

 

John has had a shit day. He is ready for it to end, even if it is on this miserable note. He just wants it over.

He walks to his armchair as if wading through mud, and collapses on it as so much dead weight. He stares into space, muscles throbbing, feet aching, feeling sick. He should really drag himself to bed, but the thought that he would need to take off his shoes turns his stomach with the sheer futility of it all.

He wants to cry, or scream, kick something, break something. He feels an idiot of the highest magnitude. For years, while longing and craving for Sherlock Holmes, he had always kept alive the belief that the man was asexual, or sapiosexual, or something just as out of the ordinary as Sherlock himself -he even did some research on the subject and stumbled upon a few nifty new terms. He also believed that he was a virgin, almost like some kind of snarky, bratty angel, a creature out of his and everybody else’s reach, who hovered six feet above the rest of humanity’s basest instincts and thrived on intellect alone. And that belief helped a hell of a lot with his everyday life at Baker Street.

The reality of it is as crass and ordinary as one could possibly imagine. No, he is no angel, and definitely not a virgin, and neither are his instincts purer than anybody else’s. In fact, it could very well be that the reason Sherlock has abstained from sex and romance all these years, is because he simply was not interested, because _nobody compares to his fucking ex_ , how’s that for a slap across the face. And the nagging, unbearable suspicion is starting to creep into John’s head that Sherlock has been in love with Victor all this time. Fuck! FUCK!

John kicks the side table and it tips over. The empty, dirty mug that had been there smashes on the floor with a satisfying crackle.

 Well, John Watson, now we know what the problem was. It’s depressingly familiar: the man is, and always has been, out of your league. He likes tall, skinny, smooth-as-fuck supermodels. How about that. And to think John had once believed Sherlock was interested in him. It’s so fucking humiliating. There’s such an awfully sour taste in his mouth he might be sick.  

 

Keys at the door. John’s head whips around.

It’s not midnight yet.

It’s Sherlock. It’s Sherlock!

Nothing happened, squeaks a tiny, shameless little voice in his brain. _Nothing happened!_ Relief washes over John in such a desperate way that he knows he should be embarrassed. But he isn’t. Right now he is just glad.

 

Sherlock looks at John from the threshold. John is… glowing, lit from within with joy. Sherlock smiles faintly, not questioning right now what the reason might be or what could possibly have changed since earlier this evening. Because he hasn’t seen an expression like that on John’s face for months, certainly not aimed at him, and it’s wonderful.

Then, just like that, John’s face falls, and the anger is back.

 

John observes Sherlock standing there with the top buttons of his shirt undone, hair rustled and messed up, cheeks flustered pink. His throat clenches and burns, his fists claw, his lip curls.

“Had fun, didn’t you?” grunts John.

Sherlock blushes.

Gotcha. But if this is triumph, it tastes like bile.

“I can’t fucking believe you, Sherlock.”

“What?”

“Don’t give me that. He is engaged, for Christ’s sake!”

Sherlock frowns, fury rising up again, all his good intentions circling around the drain. He meditates his answer. ‘Nothing happened’ is an option.

“Your point being?” he says instead.

John gapes, lost for words.

“Just… just… what are you fucking doing?!”

“Why are you so angry?” jabs Sherlock, with intent.

“Why am I so angry?” John pants, his foot firmly stuck right in it. “Disappointed is what I am!” Yes, that’s true as well. “I expected better of you, Sherlock!” he shouts.

Sherlock’s mouth twists into a spiteful, self-loathing smirk.

“Really? I was under the impression that you only ever expect the worst from me.”

John squints his eyes, murderous, mouth pursed. Really not the time, Sherlock, not the right fucking time at all.

“Why do you dislike him so much?” goads Sherlock, with a mellifluous tone that sounds as if he already knows the answer.

“Why?” barks John. “Because he is a tosspot! He is cheating on his fiancé of six weeks and fucking with the head of a man that… that…” His train of thought strays. All he can think of is of Sherlock with Victor, and it’s tearing through him like a bloody chainsaw.

“A man that what?” urges Sherlock.

“That can’t fucking cope!” John shouts, panting, furious, aching. It’s so fucking unfair. So unfair, in fact, and John feels treated so rottenly by fate and this life, that he realises he is thinking and acting like an eight-year-old and can’t begin to give a toss about it. “He’s an arsehole who will break your heart, and you know it, and he’s done it before, and he’ll do it again, and yet he has you eating out of his fucking hand!… Fuck!” he yells, kicking a chair.

Sherlock smirks with derision. He also looks tremendously sad.

“So this is all out of an honest, selfless concern about my well being, isn’t it” he jeers, rampant with irony.

“You started doing heroin when he left you, didn’t you?” John hurls at him for an answer, because he has a point, and he is going to fucking make it.

“No.”

“No?!”

“No. That’s not how it was. And even if it was,” rage is bubbling up in Sherlock’s gut, “it’s been fifteen years, John! And I’ve been clean for ten! Give me some fucking credit!”

“I would bloody love to!” retorts John. “But along comes Sir Poshfuck of Cokeheadshire and you crawl back to him at a flick of his fingers! Have you no self-respect at all?”

Sherlock has an acid grimace of anger twisting his face.

“You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about” his voice seething with tightly controlled rage. “Not about Victor, and not about me.”

“I don’t?” shouts John, ravaged by a storm of conflicting emotions.

“No!” barks Sherlock in turn, startling him.

“So tell me!”

Sherlock snorts. “Why bother when you’ve obviously made up your mind already?”

John snorts in turn. “Well, what am I supposed to think? You never fucking told me!”

Sherlock tries to meet John’s eyes, sensing an opening. “Tell you what” he says, now calmly. Come on, John, just _ask_.

John swallows. Too close, too bloody close for comfort. “Anything! Something!” John yells, panting.

He can’t. He just can’t. Not with Sherlock all disheveled by whatever he’s been up to with Mr. Universe earlier this evening and fuck, the picture hits him like a punch in the gut and he can’t breathe. “So who got you into drugs then?” he says, half choked, purposely avoiding the subject yet once more.

Sherlock sighs deeply, disappointment bitter on his tongue. He shakes his head heavily. “This is pointless.”

He turns around to leave. John pants, fists clenching at his sides, desperate to stop him.

But Sherlock doesn’t leave. He stops and faces John, with the air of a man who has nothing to lose.

“Why did you kiss me” asks Sherlock, softly, toneless.

John’s stomach plunges through the floor. “I thought I said…” he chokes out.

“Why did you kiss me” repeats Sherlock, stubbornly.

John’s chest heaving fast, his heart threatening to burst through his ribcage. “Do you really think this is the time...?”

“Why did you kiss me” insists Sherlock, with the urgency of a toddler this time.

“I don’t know, alright?!” yells John.

Sherlock scoffs. He shifts on his feet, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, and he looks pained. “That’s not good enough” he says with a threadbare voice.

“Well, I’m sorry, but fuck you!” shouts John. He rubs his hair, pacing the floor, and he kicks the rug.

Sherlock turns and walks out the door.

John snaps to attention. “Where are you going? To him?” he asks, embarrassingly close to desperate.

Sherlock does not bother replying and just makes for the stairs.

“He is fucking engaged!” yells John after him.

That stops Sherlock right in the spot. He whips around sharply to look at him. “So were you!” he yells.

John stiffens up. “What?” he asks, confused.

“Your bloody stag night!” shouts Sherlock.

John goes white. “What do you m…?”

“How stupid do you think I am! ‘I don’t mind’?” Sherlock mimics his voice and even his fucking posture. Oh, how bloody typical of him to remember every fucking single word.

John feels trapped, and terrified, caught like a deer in the headlights, and when he finally comes across something to say, it’s the worst possible answer, and the most unfair and insincere and cheap, but it’s blurting out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

“I was drunk!”

Sherlock flinches, and grimaces as if he’s just been stabbed. _Or shot through the chest_ , thinks John. With all traces of anger and bitterness gone from his expression, he looks like a heart-broken little boy, hopeless and forlorn. John’s brow scrunches. _What?_

“You left me!” John roars, because all he wants now is to hug Sherlock close to his chest and never let him go, and he is not fucking _allowed_. “For two years! What was I supposed to do?!” And it’s himself he hates for it, but it surely isn’t coming out like that.

“But I came back!” yells Sherlock, a quiver in his voice. “And you got married anyway!”

 _What_ …? John is gaping in perplexity, his eyes wide, stunned. What the hell is Sherlock saying here?

John swallows on a throat dry as sandpaper. 

“You died! You broke my heart!” he shouts then, taking himself by surprise, his voice breaking, years of ache and loss and devastation lumping in his throat.

“You chose her!” Sherlock shouts back, eyes rimmed in red. “You broke mine!”

Staring each other down across the hall, an abyss gaping under their feet, standing in a place still as death, the eye of a storm that rages wild all around them.

“Why did you kiss me” says Sherlock, barely a whisper.

John is shaken, confused, raw, furious, and madly jealous. There has never been a worst time for a love confession.

He can’t. He just can’t do it.

“I don’t know” he breathes.

And as he looks at Sherlock he knows he could have put a knife through his heart and he would have hurt him less.

Sherlock turns around for the last time and leaves.

 

John watches him disappear around the bend. He is crumbling down inside. He doesn’t even hear Mrs. Hudson, whatever it is she is saying, through the wall of white noise in his ears. He hadn’t even noticed she was there. He manages to say something he could not repeat if his life depended on it, before closing the door two inches too close to her face for civility.

Once inside he cannot move. He feels numb, shocked, blank.

He does not know for how long he stands there, and he can’t say what has been in his mind all that time. But when he comes out of his haze, he needs all his heavily ingrained discipline not to fall to his knees and cry his eyes out.

One crushing thought surges within him. _Sherlock loves me._

No, that’s not it, _that’s not it_. Of course he does, but it’s not that. Because we already knew that. No, that’s not it.

_Sherlock fucking wants me._

John struggles to breathe.

He wants me. He is gone. _To him._

 _Now_ he cries.

 

 

  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't you hate unfinished business.  
> So does Sherlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I regret nothing.

 

Door bell. It’s almost 1 a.m. It’s either Sherlock or John with his gun.

Victor slips out of bed and puts a bathrobe over his loose knit lounge pants and t-shirt —he only sleeps in the nude when Alex is there. The man is like an oven. (Not to mention he could number the total amount of times they’ve been in a bed together and failed to fuck. Hence, nudity.)

While he hops down the stairs the doorbell rings again. Eager, aren’t we?

It’s Sherlock.

“I take it it didn’t go too well” says Victor, tilting his head.

Sherlock looks fierce and absolutely ravishing.

“May I come in” says Sherlock —that deep voice of his making Victor _cream_ —, his expression defiant, fevered. Victor may be wrong, but he’d wager it’s not a shoulder to cry on he is here for. Well, Trevor, you used to dream about this often enough.

He realises he is twirling the ring on his left hand. The pause stretches.

Victor swallows, and runs his eyes up and down Sherlock’s body, because he can’t help himself, and his crotch tightens sharply, heat flaring up inside him.

He _has_ always been awful at denying himself. He pushes the door wide open.

“Come in” he says.

Sherlock doesn’t even wait to cross the threshold to crush into him and kiss him voraciously.

 _Sod the neighbours_ , thinks Victor as he stumbles backwards, pulling Sherlock after him by the neck of his shirt, _we’re moving out anyway_. He kicks the door closed with Sherlock already stripping him of the bathrobe, pinning him roughly against the wall and plundering his mouth, sucking his lips and his tongue and biting, raking his hands down his back and digging his fingertips in Victor’s sides. When their hips come together, Victor notices Sherlock is already hard. He pulls Victor’s t-shirt so eagerly it rips at the neck. _Good god_ , thinks Victor, heart thumping in his chest, cock throbbing and quickly hardening, _this is going to be quick_.

With Sherlock’s hands inside his pants and his mouth pretty much everywhere, they back down the corridor into the sitting room.

“Alex is going to have my arse for this, you know?” says Victor when his pants come down, as he foots them off.

He shoves Sherlock away, wicked grin on his face, buck naked, and helps him get rid of his clothes. Coat and jacket soon flop down on the floor, but the shirt is tight, the buttons are about to burst. Victor is tempted to rip them, but he changes his mind when he notices Sherlock’s eyes on his hands, glazed, half-lidded, a slight frown. He looks almost pained with lust. _Hot damn_. So he takes his time. Not much, mind, he really is in no mood to stall.

He is overcome with a spike of arousal when he reveals Sherlock’s body, lean and pale, almost ethereal compared to Alex’s bulging, tremendous muscles. He stoops to kiss Sherlock's neck and chest, hands in his hair. Sherlock throws his head back, supporting himself with clawed hands on Victor's shoulders, and moans a desperate, breathy sound. When Victor sucks his nipples his voice hitches.  

Sherlock fumbles frantically with his zip to get his trousers off. They pool around his ankles while Victor kneels down in front of him to help him out of his shoes. Sherlock’s eyes glassy, his mouth parted, his chest heaving. Victor stares right into his eyes from down there, grabs Sherlock’s cock and gives it a decent tug, and Sherlock’s knees almost give, his eyes flickering shut. Victor grins. Something tells him that, if he gets his mouth anywhere near Sherlock’s cock right now, this will be over in a second. Maybe later. _We have all night_. But before getting back up, he runs the hardened tip of his tongue very quickly on the slit, to taste him, and Sherlock hisses.

Victor gets up and reaches in the pockets of his suit jacket, hanging off the back of the chair, for lube. 

“Alex is going to fuck me the whole night long so that I remember who owns me” he breathes into Sherlock’s ear. “I won’t be able to sit for a fucking week. Imagine what John would do to you if he got his hands on you.” Oh, Sherlock's face when he hears this, something between shock and trembling, aching need.

He backs Sherlock against the dining table. _Yes, fuck, we’re going to do this right fucking here._ He mutters in his ear again.

“Imagine John’s face when he sees you. When he smells me on you. When you walk in with a fucking limp.”

Sherlock whimpers.

Victor spins him around and bends him onto the table. Sherlock is pliant. He just wants to be taken care of. Good god, look at him, Victor moans out of sheer, piercing lust, cock throbbing, skin tingling, want burning him alive from the inside out. He rips off the packet of lube and drips some of the stuff straight onto Sherlock’s arse. Those plump, smooth cheeks ripple and tighten at the cold feel of the lube. Victor coats his fingers and rubs one around Sherlock’s hole, making him squirm.

“Imagine what he would do to you now, if he saw you like this” whispers Victor, as he slips one finger in.

Sherlock gasps and clenches around him when he feels it, but he is very aroused, and very relaxed. Victor starts gently, tentatively, but with Sherlock’s knuckles white holding onto the table, and his breathing shuddering, catching in his throat around a knot of sensation, he is soon adding a second finger, and driving them in harder, faster. Sherlock’s breathing is coming out in sharp gasps. When he turns his head to look back at him he looks undone, his indescribable beauty like a punch in Victor's gut.

“John wouldn’t take his time, would he?” mutters Victor then, bending close to Sherlock’s ear. “He’s been waiting for so long. He’d fucking grab you and push you to your hands and knees and fuck you through the ground”

Sherlock moans a breathy sound, buries his face in his arm. Third finger, twisting his wrist, and Sherlock is pushing down on him, pressing for more contact. Victor sets up a punishing pace and watches, and listens, and Sherlock is bracing himself on the table, parting his legs wider, to keep himself in place and feel the full brunt of Victor’s fingers. Ah, his moaning, his grunting. He is fucking _desperate_. It’s so fucking hot to have him there like that, and he’s wanted this and fantasised about this for so long, and Victor’s cock is leaking, and if I don’t fuck you right now I’m going to fucking set the house on fire.

Victor pulls his fingers out, and with Sherlock turning his head to see, his eyes glazed, Victor slicks himself up and rubs the head of his cock on Sherlock’s cleft, around his hole, and he’s fucking dying to impale him in one sharp thrust, but he wants this to be good, he wants it to be perfect, and there is yet one more thing he will take from him.

“Victor…” begs Sherlock, gravelly, exasperated, when he feels him stalling.

“What” goads Victor, because fuck, he wants to hear this.

“Victor…”

“What do you want.”

“Fuck me” mumbles Sherlock, no hesitation, no shame. “Fuck me” he repeats, more forcefully, with urgency.

Victor grins, grabs Sherlock’s hip tight with one hand and guides himself in with the other.

Sherlock gasps out in short breaths as he penetrates him, and when he feels Victor fully inside him, he groans. Victor feels that rumbling sound flashing all up and down his spine and bursting, boiling hot, through his crotch.

Victor watches Sherlock under him and he wants this like air. He circles his hips so that he is not so much rutting as changing the angle and the pressure, and the muscles of Sherlock’s back are rippling with his shivering. Victor bends over him, his chest and stomach pressed flush on Sherlock’s back, to kiss the back of his neck, but before long he is biting and sucking; there will be a bruise there tomorrow. Sherlock moans, and hooks a hand around Victor’s neck, and rears his head so that Victor can reach better. Slowly, Victor makes the arch of his movements wider, and starts building up the friction. He needs to straighten up to be able to move the way he wants. Sherlock releases his neck and grabs the table again, strongly, anticipating what comes next. Victor’s crotch clenches so hard at the vision of Sherlock getting ready to be fucked that it borders on painful.

“What if it was John fucking you” rasps Victor, picking up the pace. “What if it was John’s cock inside you.”

Sherlock clenches involuntarily at these words. Victor pounds into him hard, raking his fingers down his back, leaving a pattern of red traces, and weaving into his hair, a hand firmly anchored around Sherlock’s hip. And Sherlock is moaning loudly, the slick and slap of their fucking pornographic, and Victor thinks of Alex watching them, of Alex _claiming_ him after this, and it might well be that he has never been more aroused in his entire life.

He makes himself focus on Sherlock, trying to drag it out as much as he can. Snaking his hips, he aims for the sweet spot within Sherlock’s body, and when he hits it Sherlock hisses and bites his arm.

"Ah, fuuuuck, Victor... Oh god, oh my god... oh fuck..." 

Sherlock is lost for words, and Victor knows he won’t last much longer. It’s all just too fucking much.

“Tell me what you want, Sherlock” he grumbles. “Tell me how you want it.”

“Fuck. Harder. Fuck. Me. Harder.” Victor’s thrusts quash the words out of Sherlock one by one.

“Call him” Victor chokes out, fucking frantically now, all control lost, orgasm gripping him.

“Ahhh, fuuuck. ... _John_ …!” mumbles Sherlock, a broken, breathy sound.

Victor sees white when he comes, last thrusts deep and intense enough to hurt, but those noises are certainly not what Sherlock sounds like when he is complaining.

He is panting when he pulls out. He rolls Sherlock onto his back, makes him sit higher up so that all of his body is laying on the table, knees up, feet flat near the edge, and before he even has his breath back, he sticks his fingers deep inside Sherlock and takes his cock in his mouth. As he fucks him with his fingers he runs his tongue from the root to the head a few times, because he fucking wants to. He then sucks the head and flickers his tongue on its ridges. Sherlock is writhing his hips, clenching around his fingers, his breathing so fast, so close now, and when Sherlock finally opens his eyes and Victor is sure he is watching, he takes him in deep, swallowing around him —the angle is challenging; Victor’s eyes water--, and Sherlock comes with a string of high-pitch moans in time with the shove of Victor’s fingers in and out of him, hands clasping fast on the table, hips stuttering, the aftershocks shaking him from head to toe, while Victor keeps finger-fucking him and sucking him through it, gently now. He swallows the last spurts of come and makes Sherlock hiss and jolt when he licks him clean.

When he pulls back and watches him, Sherlock looks so beautiful it’s out of this world, his face relaxed and glowing, and very far away. Victor wipes a hand over his mouth, and leans close to kiss him. Sherlock allows it, lazy, boneless, his mouth moving only slightly to take the kiss.

And Victor thinks that it’s an awful shame that he can’t just flop down next to him. The downsides of fucking on a table.

He scrubs a hand over his face and ruffles his hair. He backs up until he hits the sofa with the back of his calves, and allows himself to crumble there like a rag doll.

Sherlock is still lying flat on the table, —chest heaving, hands at his sides, knees high and apart affording Victor the most obscene view-, staring at the ceiling.

Victor needs to clean himself up, clean Sherlock up, drink water, make Sherlock drink water, tidy up the mess, and stay put for the stab of guilt. Just because Alex pretty much gave him a free pass doesn’t mean he hasn’t just cheated on him. Although right now he can’t think about that, or anything much for that matter. He feels drowsy with satisfaction. Sherlock could enumerate each and every process in his brain that makes him feel this good, and list all the participating hormones. He might ask later. Much, much later.

 

Sherlock sits up slowly, a grimace when his arse is pressed against the hard wood. He carefully slides off the table, his knees trembling when all his weight is on them. His expression drives a spear through Victor’s heart. He looks disconcerted, somewhat lost.

Victor pats the spot by his side. "Come over here." He sounds hoarse. Fuck, he really needs a drink of water.

Sherlock walks over, gingerly putting one foot in front of the other, but he hesitates to sit down. Oh, bless him.

“We fuck on it all the time, Sherlock” grins Victor, managing to sound mischievous, even with the drowsiness and the sleepy eyes. “It cleans up well, I swear.”

Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that. Sherlock looks quite put off. But he lowers himself slowly on the sofa anyway, because standing up at this point has ceased to be an option. He sighs and he runs a hand through his hair, and for a second he looks so young that Victor has to smile, a swell of good memories washing over him, making him feel warm and happy in such a simple, straightforward way he would have thought impossible between them. Not with their lives, their past and this particular situation being as complicated as it is. He leans over and kisses Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock turns his head slightly and peaks at him out of the corner of his eye, as if he can’t face him outright.

“Hey,” mutters Victor, almost whispers, “are you ok?”

Sherlock nods, his breathing still heavier than normal.

They stay quiet and still for a while, coming down from their high.

“So that happened” says Victor, smiling calmly, the buzz of his orgasm still making him feel fuzzy.

Sherlock very nearly smiles as well. A silence elapses.

“Why did you…?” begins Sherlock after a moment. And isn’t he hoarse as well. “I mean. John. Alex.”

“Did you like it?” smiles Victor. He is more anxious than he lets on about the answer. And he knows that Sherlock has noticed that he hasn't really replied to his question.

Sherlock blushes slightly, lowering his face, and takes his time.

“I thought that if this happened… I mean, I did not realise that it wouldn’t be just between the two of us.”

Victor sighs. He probably lets his frown get deeper than he would have liked for a second. “Well, it’s not just you and me anymore, is it?”

Sherlock sighs as well and rubs his face tiredly. “I suppose not.” He stares into space for some time.

“Have you thought about it often then?” Victor nudges him in the ribs, playful again.

Sherlock blushes a brighter shade of pink. “Shut up.” He sighs. And he sighs again. “What happens with Alex?”

Victor raises his eyebrows. “Nothing, darling. I’m crazy about him. I’m going to marry him in June.”

“And he’ll… he’ll just forgive you?”

Victor runs a hand through his hair. “I told you, we talked about it. He doesn’t think there is anything to forgive. It would be a whole different story if I lied to him, or if I wanted to be with you, but...” Victor looks at him warmly “I don’t want to. I want to be with him. I suppose he didn’t want any unfinished business hanging in the air. Or maybe he is just making sure he hoards a couple of get-out-of-jail cards for a rainy day.” Victor smiles dozily. “He doesn’t doubt me, or us. He knows I’m his.” And as he says that, he feels it, so strong and real he can almost touch it.

Sherlock feels less hurt than he would have thought by that. It’s not like he wants to be with Victor either. Which leads right back to...

“John is not going to forgive this” says Sherlock then, barely a whisper.

Victor strokes his hair gently. “Well, that’s a fucking shame” he says. “But it would appear you don’t know John as well as you thought you did, do you? He might surprise you.”

“I don’t see how. He gets blind with jealousy at fantasies and figurations. This was quite real.” Sherlock closes his eyes. He looks about to pass out from exhaustion. It has been one heck of a day.

“And doesn’t that make all the difference.” mutters Victor.

Sherlock sighs and says nothing to that.

“Are you staying?” says Victor at length.

Sherlock shrugs.

“Stay” says Victor.

Sherlock opens his eyes and stares at his hands, quiet.

“Please, stay” insists Victor. He will spell it out if he has to, as he always did. “I don’t want you to go yet. I want you to stay here with me tonight.”

After what feels like a very long while, Sherlock nods. Victor wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close to kiss his temple.

“Come on, let’s go upstairs.” he says, raising up to his feet, his movements sluggish, and offering a hand to Sherlock.

“I can sleep here.” says Sherlock.

“No, come on up.”

“In your bed?”

“Yes.” Victor stretches his arms wide and yawns. “I’m not stowing you away in the guests room after this. Alex would say that’s a rotten thing to do.”

Sherlock pulls half a smile.

“He must be a remarkable man” he says, without irony for once.

Victor grins like a little boy.

“He is.”

*

 

Sherlock is drained and beyond fatigued, but of course he cannot find sleep. He lies on Alex’s side of the bed staring at the ceiling, Victor decoratively draped next to him, looking about as comfortable and peaceful as a great cat in his afternoon nap, breathing softly.

They haven’t gone to sleep straight away. They washed and fetched drinks and that woke them up a little, so they laid on their backs for a while, chatting and laughing -although Victor has done most of the latter, Sherlock has also contributed, albeit modestly.

Victor has asked if Sherlock will go to the wedding. Which is outrageous, of course, because frankly, after this? He has gone over his reasons why this is simply not possible, and one might go so far as to say that he has even won the argument, but in the end he has promised he will attend just the same. God knows how that happened. It should be interesting -yes, he is being sarcastic. Alex is only twice as big as he is, after all. And those sisters of his look fierce, the four of them.

After some time and more and more yawns, Victor has turned to him for a spell of kissing, gentle, not quite chaste but not lustful either -perhaps the way old lovers do, but of course Sherlock wouldn’t know- and between a firm, long kiss on Sherlock’s forehead and a “good night, Sherlock”, there has been a deeply affected, loving stare skipping from one of Sherlock’s eyes to the other, and a very little smile.

It has taken a few minutes for Sherlock to mutter “good night, Victor” in return, and by then it’s quite possible that Victor was already fast asleep.

Sherlock almost laughs at himself thinking that, even without the photographs, he would know Alex at once just by his smell. The sheets are clean, fresh from the laundry, but Alex’s scent, Alex’s _presence_ , is still there, lingering pretty much everywhere. It drives Victor’s point home about not being just the two of them anymore in a very, very physical fashion.

Victor doesn’t seem to think that the world is going to end for what has happened, for himself or for Sherlock, and although intellectually Sherlock agrees, in his heart of hearts he just cannot see John ever getting over this.

Sherlock sighs deeply, shudderingly. It’s over, whatever it was. They killed it between the two of them.

 

*

 

It’s Victor’s voice that wakes him up the next morning, a quiet rumble from outside the room, full of warmth and sprinkled with chuckles. He is obviously on the phone with his fiancé, and judging by his tone, the wedding is still on.

Sherlock rubs his eyes harder than he should and tries to sit up, and, hm, oh yes, that happened.

His clothes are draped neatly on a chair by the bed. He dresses quickly. He has a look at himself in the bathroom mirror -he has an extreme case of bed-head and a couple of purple bruises on his neck- but he just isn’t bothered.

He is not feeling raw and hurting as he was last night. He feels rather blank. He exists in a manner of emotional limbo, as if he had exhausted all his capability for emotion in one day, and it might take a while to refill his stocks. It’s more endurable than the paralysing terror that John might really be out of his life for good, so he will settle for this very gladly. Because he needs to think, he needs to move, he needs to keep going, or he fears the abyss will find him.

He hops downstairs to the hall, picks up a torn envelope from the basket on the floor, and scribbles a quick note. He grabs his coat from the hook where Victor has bothered to hang it some time this morning, and just leaves.

 

Later on in the day, he gets a message from Victor.

_My pleasure._

And Sherlock cannot help but smile. The cheeky bugger.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for a reckoning.

It’s been a long and sleepless night. John has spent it tossing and turning, and by the crack of dawn he feels more exhausted than if he had never gone to bed in the first place.

When he hears noise downstairs, it takes him a long while to drag himself out of the limbo between slumber and wake he has stubbornly been burrowing into for hours, without ever getting any deeper than the tip of his nose. He is knackered, and his back and neck ache something fierce. He doesn’t even know how he’ll face Sherlock, or what he’ll say, or what he’ll fucking feel for that matter.

He shuffles downstairs rubbing his eyes, a clamp of steel around his temples, head throbbing. The noise is in Sherlock’s bedroom. Good god. He is not ready for this. He fills the kettle under the tab with shaky hands, and then a glass.

“Sherlock?” he calls, voice hoarse even after a sip of water.

No answer. More noises from Sherlock’s room, unhurried.

“Sherlock?” he calls again.

John drops the spoon and crouches to pick it up. When he stands up, after a hammerstrike of pain in his head that leaves him seeing white sparks for a minute, Mycroft is standing in the middle of the room, as if he had just materialised on the spot like the incarnated spirit of the Financial Times.

John blinks again. He is too groggy to show surprise. He doesn’t even care how Mycroft entered the flat. He could have teleported himself through the walls straight from his supervillain lair or his batcave or whatever, and John would still be past caring.

“Where is Sherlock?” says John, fatigue making him sound more collected than he feels - he doesn’t have any spare energy right now to waste into furnishing his voice with intonation or emotion.

“South to our parents.” Mycroft gives him a closed-lip minimal smile. John thinks that’s him trying to appear sympathetic. “He won’t last, however” adds Mycroft. “He can’t stand it there for long. We grew up in the country. It’s mind-numbingly boring.”

Whether by intention or not, Mycroft is talking to himself now, because John is looking at the travel bag by Mycroft’s feet and has stopped listening.

Mycroft tips his head and acknowledges the bag. “Ah. He asked me to gather a few things for him. Clothes and such” he says.

John feels himself frowning, and his head throbbing in response. “He’s… he’s leaving me?” he says, after a few seconds trying to swallow down the knot that has suddenly tightened in his throat.

Mycroft raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t put it in those terms.” he offers the Mycroftian version of a caring smile again. “He needs… time.”

A ghost of anger attempts to rise within John. _He_ needs time? _Sherlock_ needs time? What about…? He stops his own train of thought before it starts whining “And what about me?” Because even in his own brain it sounds ridiculous and embarrassing.

That, and he is still seeing Sherlock’s face yesterday after John shouted ‘I was drunk’. His chest compresses with the urge to cry, withering his anger to a whisper. It leaves an empty, colourless feeling in its wake, and a sweet, meek sadness, like what one feels when suddenly faced with the memory of something that can’t be mended, like a childhood toy fallen overboard, sinking in the sea.

The kettle whistles. John turns around slowly, feeling clumsy and stiff, and piles three heaped teaspoons of instant coffee in his mug with heavy, sluggish hands. He even rises the mug to Mycroft - eyes squinting, offended by the morning light - in silent offering. Mycroft declines, also silently, with a tip of his head. Same with the seat John gestures at.

John does sit down himself. “How is he?” he says, eyes closed to a slit. There is really not much to see anyway, and keeping them open fucking hurts.

“Confused, hurting and terrified, I believe” says Mycroft. “But I’m no mind reader. Mistakes can be made over the phone.”

It takes John a few seconds to catch up but he does eventually: So, Mycroft hasn’t seen Sherlock since yesterday.

Well.

“Terrified” mutters John. “Terrified of what.”

“That he’s lost you, I presume.”

John blinks. He swallows and he stirs his coffee, for something to do. He rolls the question in his mouth for a few seconds before he lets it out. “What has he told you” he asks.

“Nothing much, really. That you quarreled.” Mycroft clears his throat politely. “He did not need to say more. I was able to infer.”

John gulps his coffee. He must ask, even though he already knows the answer. “Did he sleep at yours?”

Mycroft purses his mouth and hesitates for half a second before he speaks. “Oh, no, at Victor’s.”

John expects in silence a wave of anger or a surge of murderous hatred that never comes. The thing he feared more than anything has happened, but he just feels hollow, drained, made of dry bones and little else.  He closes his eyes for a spell, granting himself a momentary reprieve from the sunlight that’s worsening his headache, and perhaps from this day itself.

He hears Mycroft’s voice and it’s quite soft and soothing. “Victor is not a problem for you, John” he says.

John’s mouth tugs up in a bitter smirk.

“Oh, believe you me, Mycroft, he is.”

Mycroft sighs, and he also sounds tired.

“No, John,” he insists, firm, “he really isn’t.”

John opens his eyes to stare at him. Mycroft stares back, putting serious heft behind it. John wishes he dropped the fucking Sphynx mode and spoke clearly, but it would seem that, if this is what John wants, John will have to ask, and John is in no position at this minute, physically or mentally, to enter any conversation, least of all that one.

Mycroft harrumphs.

“Anyway, I must see to this. If you’ll excuse me.”

 

Mycroft will still be busy for fifteen more minutes, collecting a few papers, files and books, the violin and the new laptop John finally convinced Sherlock to buy, which is ten times better than John’s old craptop. Not that Sherlock has stopped borrowing his. John almost smiles, shuts his eyes and listens to the rustle of unrushed, efficient activity, and to his own breathing. The caffeine kicks in, the blood in his brain starts thinning, and his head clears somewhat. John knows these effects will only go so far, but it’s a relief and he is grateful for it.

Before he leaves, all Mycroft has for John is that little, joyless, commiserating smile, and a kinder look than John is used to seeing on his face.

“Have you got any words you’d like me to relay?” asks Mycroft.

 Putting on a smile that stands in for a shrug he can’t bring himself to do, not with this headache, John sighs, “What is there to say?”

Mycroft purses his mouth, looks down to his toes and leaves.

 

Much later, after more coffee, painkillers and a nap, John thinks it’s odd that Mycroft has not delegated such a menial task as gathering his brother’s underpants and socks to one of his minions. Though not so odd if what he really wanted was to check in on him.

And John chuckles a thin, cracked sound. What a fucking family.

 

*

 

One day, two days, four days, one week, three weeks. Not one word.

Not that John has sent word either. And he could have, right? But he hasn’t.

 

Now, when the bell rings, John doesn’t feel the sudden rush of the first days, and he doesn’t hurry to the door anymore.

He doesn’t hurry this time either. He still has in his hands the dripping mug he was drying, and the kitchen towel he was drying it with, when he shuffles to the door and opens it, only to find Victor Motherfucking Trevor standing there, tall as the fucking London Shard, in fucking casual weekend clothes and a look of intolerably radiant ruddy health.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” John hisses, hands stiff around the mug and towel. He feels ridiculous and unprepared. Not that Victor is about to pull a sword on him and shout ‘en garde!’ or whatever, but John wishes that at least Victor hadn’t caught him in his fucking checkered felt slippers - now, was that too much to fucking ask, O Fates?!

Victor fumbles in the inside chest pocket of his posh-as-unholy-fuck black leather jacket, and produces a plain white envelope. _Not plain, John_ , says Sherlock’s voice in his head. _Notice the thickness of the paper and the grain. Which types of paper still bear watermarks nowadays? Look at the lettering. It’s expensive, it’s been professionally made. Probabilities are..._

“I came to bring you this” interrupts Victor, his voice no less infuriatingly velvety or bedroomy than the last time he saw his fucking face.

John frowns before putting down the things in his hands on the console by the door, and takes the envelope Victor is handing him. What the fuck is that all about. A letter from Sherlock? A court citation? A fucking “sorry I fucked your flatmate get well soon” card?

John rips the envelope without ceremony and proceeds to snort a splendidly spiteful snort that hurts his throat. It’s a fucking wedding invitation. To Victor’s fucking wedding with one Mr. Alexander James Ferryman, in June, in fucking Norfolk. But wait, it gets better, it’s for “Mr. John Watson & Mr. Sherlock Holmes”

John slowly looks up to Victor with what somebody, now deceased, termed “the smile of death” -oh, the good old days, when Moriarty was the worst of their problems.

“You have a cruel, evil, twisted sense of humour” says John, his voice a vicious rasp, simmering with rage. “I can see why Sherlock likes you so much.”

Victor holds his stare, head cocked down, lizard eyes at full power. Fucking handsome bastard, thinks John, feeling his fist claw shut.

“With the kind of things you’re always saying about him,” retorts Victor, “I sometimes wonder why Sherlock likes you at all.”

Ouch.

“Why would I want to come to your wedding?” says John, after one round of a staring contest that nobody wins or loses.

“Because Sherlock will be there, hoping to see you” says Victor.

John snorts again, but it’s out of sheer exasperation now. He even breaks eye contact to rub the bridge of his nose, because _seriously_.

“Sherlock” he says, non-plussed. “At your wedding. With your… your husband. And his family. On your wedding day.” Each word in its own little island of what-the-fuckery.

Victor nods slightly. Nods, nods, nods, nods and nods, to be precise.

And John shakes his head, in honest dismay. “I’m sorry,” he almost laughs, “but you’re all too sophisticated for me. I’m afraid I would stick out like a sore thumb.” He even hands the invitation back without chucking it to his face, how’s that for manners.

Victor doesn’t take it, so John leaves it on the console and makes his way back to the kitchen. He might as well just finish drying the dishes. There’s still room in this scene for one last surreal touch.

Victor walks to the sofa and sits down. John follows his movements like a hawk, with an unbelieving stare, and he is still wearing his murderous smile, eyes bright with hatred, when he turns his back to Victor to face the sink again.

“Sure, sit down. And help yourself to anything you like, why don’t you. Oh, you already did” he says. Yes, childish, lame, but give a man a break.

Victor is not saying anything. John has to fight the urge to peek over his shoulder to check what he is doing.

“Couldn’t you have chosen anyone else?” says John, speaking to the dish in his hands.

“Pardon me?” says Victor after a couple of seconds, when John doesn’t expand.

“For your last hurrah of freedom.” John throws down the rag on the worktop with more irritation than anger. “Did it have to be Sherlock? Don’t you have them queueing up in the street?” He huffs, scrubs his face. God, he is tired.

Victor has a mean, mean glare on him when he wishes, like right now. John seems to have hit some sort of nerve. What did I say, he almost asks.

“What happened between Sherlock and me is none of your business” says Victor, cold and cutting.

John can’t really argue with that. Or he could, but that would mean a level of disclosure he is not comfortable with, least of all with _him_. He still argues the toss though.

“He is fucking… vulnerable.”

“He is an adult” Victor snaps back. “And as far as Sherlock is concerned, you’re not a couple, so he doesn’t owe you any explanations.” He sounds pretty much out of patience. Well, John Watson, it seems you have finally gotten under his fucking golden skin. “And just so you know,” adds Victor, “I have loved Sherlock every bit as much as you have, for a lot longer than you have. If this is the road you want to take this, I was there first.”

Staring contest again, and John can already tell when he engages that he will lose this round.

“You left him” he says by the end of it, with very little conviction.

“No,” Victor retorts, “he broke up with me, or I swear I would be sitting right where you are now, instead of you.”

That hits John in a soft spot. Perhaps it’s the flash of a passing expression in Victor’s face he can relate to, a look of impotent sorrow and hurt for the things that could not be.

“You could have fought.” John says.

“I did.” And Victor doesn’t need to qualify or expand his reply with anything else than the look in his eyes.

Shit, thinks John, forfeiting again, doesn’t he ever blink?

John sighs. He could have growled instead, or yelled, or roared, or broken something, or even throw dirty dishwater on Victor’s curly head. Try as he might, he can’t muster anything resembling passion inside. He just feels so sad.

“Are you still in love with him?” he asks.

Victor tunes down the glare several notches, from cutthroat anger to guarded animosity.

“Are you asking if I’m pining for him, and whether I want to pursue a relationship with him? If I would trade him for Alex if I could?” He waits for John to look him in the eye before replying to his own question. “Not that you have any right to ask, but no, I’m not in love with Sherlock anymore.”

And John thinks of a time, just a few days ago, when he would have wanted to call him a bastard and a son-of-this and that and the other, because how fucking dare you et cetera et cetera, and he just has no idea where all that emotion ever came from. He is obviously incapable of feeling anything anymore, and he struggles to understand how he ever did.

“Does Sherlock know that?” he just asks.

“Of course” says Victor.

And he could ask more questions, but Victor follows up before John does.

“And he is perfectly alright about it, because he does not want a relationship with me either.”

A very pointed stare from Victor, not hostile now, but armed and ready.

“I will not apologise for what happened the other night” says Victor. “And neither will Sherlock, if I know him a bit. And I do, make no mistake.” A severe glint in his eye. “And if you’re clever, and I know you are, you won’t even need him to, and you will never ask.”

John does stare back at this. It seems there is something still alive in him that doesn’t take well to being patronised.

“This is not about what I want, or even what you want” says Victor, curtly. “It’s about what Sherlock wants.”

John half-smiles with bitterness. “Yes, well, I believe he’s made that clear.”

“Yes, he has” Victor snaps back. “Abundantly. He really can’t make it any clearer.”

John stares, Victor stares, they stare each other down. And Victor blinks, with a sigh and a look to one side. He is not interested in this game anymore.

He stands up, long as the day is long, and glides towards the door. Right on the threshold -in the exact same spot John last saw Sherlock smile, right before the storm-, Victor turns and fixes the neck of his jacket. Leave it, son, John feels like saying, it looks perfect.

“Think about the invitation” says Victor. “Sherlock will be there, and he expects you. It would be a shame to let him down just to prove a point.” And his tone softens up now. “I do hope you come. For him. So long.”

And he’s gone.

*

 

Later that day, John finds himself going over his chat (or rather, his briefing) with Mycroft that godawful day when Victor turned up in their lives. He had not given it much thought since -he had tried to put the whole day out of his mind and, whereas he had failed for the most part, the details of the conversation were something he had not struggled to forget at all.

What does he really know? What had Mycroft really told him? As he goes through his foggy recollection of that afternoon, he realises it’s not a lot. That they had met in college and had not been together long. That Victor had been a party boy, had had drug problems and depression, which was linked to a sense of low self-esteem -who would have thought, eh?- and a desire to rise up to his father’s expectations, or something like that. That he had been good with Sherlock, loyal and caring. That Sherlock struggles with intimacy -big bloody news there, Mycroft- and that he had been the one to break up the relationship, after he cut short the month-long vacation they had planned at Victor’s monster-house in Norfolk. That Sherlock had gone into heroin the moment he returned to London, and that Victor had gone to New York to finish his studies soon after that.

After giving it a good think, John realises that he does not have a clue about what had really been between Sherlock and Victor, just as Sherlock said. That he had rushed to every possible assumption that made it easier for him to hate Victor viciously and without remorse or difficult questions, and to be angry rather than petrified. That he has been blind, and deaf, and a monumental jerk, since the second Victor Trevor had set foot in the flat.

 

A couple of bad nights and what feels like hundreds of cups of tea later, John picks up the phone.

Bang on time that same evening, at ten p.m. sharp, Mycroft dashes in, umbrella still glinting from the spring shower pouring right now in the street. “We can make do without the pleasantries” he says in a business-like fashion.

John offers tea anyway. Mycroft declines and sits down on Sherlock’s armchair, which at some point might have infuriated John. It doesn’t. John wonders if it means anything.

“Sherlock is fine” says Mycroft. “He is in Salzburg at the moment. A minor case, with a whimsical twist, but really nothing he would have bothered with until a few weeks ago. He is bored and rather down, but nothing that should worry us. He is counting on seeing you at Victor’s wedding, and that’s what probably keeps his spirits from plummeting. I’ve told him he can have hopes. Have I lied to him, John?”

John stares from under a frown. He doesn’t have an answer to that yet, not yet.“You don’t hate Victor” he says.

To a lot of people that would be a non-sequitur, but not to Mycroft. “No, of course I don’t” he replies.

“After the way he treated Sherlock?” John’s tone comes out more surprised than aggressive.

Mycroft takes a deep breath, sounding rather fed up under a layer of well-trained diplomatic politeness. “Victor only ever did the best he could for Sherlock. Every time. Always. I told you so.”

“I thought you were just trying to appease me” smirks John, almost managing some humour.

“I was.” Mycroft smirks back. “But it was the truth. I wish I could have seen it as clearly back in the day as I do now, because I would have encouraged their relationship rather than sabotage it”

Well, then. It appears that Mycroft himself has tired of playing riddles and will be releasing information without John having to beg for it. It should save time.

“...Sabotage it? How?” he asks.

Mycroft stares straight into John’s eyes for a brief second, then turns his eyes to the handle of his umbrella, which he is spinning in his hands.

“Victor and I have a past,” he starts, “and I made sure Sherlock never forgot it. I knew it would unsettle him badly. He was always trying to compete with me, and comparing himself unfavourably to me, and I had much more experience than him in that department -well, in most departments at the time. So I worsened his feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing. That is no healthy emotional or mental state for a romantic relationship to thrive, something I had learned from my own experience.”

John’s eyes are very wide now, his brow scrunched.

“You and Victor” he says, in a flat tone of disbelief.

“Yes.”

“You. And Victor.”

Mycroft huffs. “Yes, John, don’t look so shocked.”

“No, I mean, it’s just…” John shakes his head. There’s the thought of Mycroft… being human, he supposes, and that’s shocking enough. But his first thought was another. “What is it with this bloke?” he says. “What is it that has you Holmes boys drooling? No, don’t answer that.” He starts to shake his head again, but stops himself at mid-arc. “Mycroft, are you blushing?”

He is. The Ice Man is blushing like a little boy.

“It’s possible.” Mycroft blushes a deeper pink still. “Pay the rumours no mind, John, I am flesh and blood.”

John laughs a bitter chuckle. “He must be quite a thing, to have you flailing like a schoolgirl after all these years.”

Mycroft purses his mouth, looks down to his shoes. “Best I’ve ever had.”

“Mycroft!” John gapes, horrified, as uncomfortable as if that was coming from his own father.

“And he was only nineteen” adds the Ice Man, not so icey now. “I shudder to think what he must be capable of now.”

John’s jaw is unhinged, and he is lost for words. “What are you trying to do to me?!”

“Having my own back for your mockery, of course.” A quick smirk curves the corner of Mycroft’s mouth for just a second, his tone prissy. “But again, it’s true.”

John shakes his head once more.“Well, it’s working. I’m floored. We’re even.” He smiles without mirth, but at least without bitterness. Mycroft smiles too.

“Why did you want to sabotage their relationship?” asks John. “What did you have against Victor?”

“Hm.” Mycroft tilts his head back, purses his mouth in a thinking pout. “My own prejudice, nothing more. Victor had been a heavy drug user and very depressed when we had been together, and even though he told me that he was rehabilitated and doing well, I decided not to trust him on that, for no material reason whatsoever. He had been very promiscuous before I met him, and I was convinced he was being promiscuous still while he was with me -although he assures me that this is not the case, and I believe him now. But I didn’t know it then. All I could think was that Victor would drag Sherlock into the party life, turning his dabble with drugs into a serious problem, and then get bored and either cheat on him or leave him, causing unspeakable damage to Sherlock’s already threadbare sense of self-esteem.”

John frowns, listening intently.

“If I had bothered to look into it properly, however,” continues Mycroft,”I would have realised that Victor was indeed clean and centered, and committed to my brother, and that he was doing a great deal of good to him. Sherlock was coming out of himself, and learning to allow being cared for, and being taken care of, and he was all the better for it. Not to mention the physical aspect of it.” Mycroft checks on John’s reaction before he proceeds. “Sherlock had been very affectionate and, dare I say, even cuddly, until puberty. Then he started to struggle very, very badly with gestures of affection and with intimacy, much as you see him now. Whatever Victor did, he broke through Sherlock’s inhibitions, if this is indeed the word for Sherlock’s difficulties, and he was visibly more relaxed, mellower and more comfortable in his own skin than I had seen him for years, before or since.”

Mycroft pauses to check on John again. John can only sigh. Yes, of course he has felt the stab of jealousy, and yes, it tastes foul, but nursing it is not going to do any good to anyone, so he just grins and bears it. And he doesn’t even feel embarrassed that Mycroft can see through him and right into his heart. He has not had illusions about being able to hide from Mycroft for a long time. Once he accepted it, he felt nothing but relief. He nods. It’s ok, he is saying, carry on.

“But instead of stopping and taking these facts into consideration, I fixated only on the risks - though many of them were of my own imagining and were unfair to both Sherlock and Victor - and I decided I had to step in before Sherlock committed too much of his heart.” A sigh. “And it might be also possible that I was simply jealous. They made such a dashing couple. And Victor was patently in love with Sherlock in a way I… well. I was resentful. At myself. How does the expression go? I had blown my chance, and it smarted. In summary, I made a mistake. I let my baser feelings and preconceptions cloud my judgement. I caused tremendous harm, and the fact that I believed my intentions to be good does not absolve me. I have had fifteen years seeing Sherlock struggle for my penance. I reckon I still deserve more, but he doesn’t.” The pain Mycroft conveys is deep, all-encompassing and ruthless.

John reclines back on his armchair with a deep breath. Well, that explains a few things. He bites the inside of his cheeks.

“Why did Sherlock break up with Victor” he says after a while.

“He thought he was doing Victor a favour. He thought himself unworthy of him. He believed he made him unhappy, that Victor put up with him out of his generosity of heart or a misplaced sense of loyalty. He had managed to convince himself that he was Victor’s, shall we say, pity… project. Much like myself, he anticipated that Victor would become bored of him soon, so he decided to take matters into his own hands and end it first. He made sure to burn all his bridges by plunging head first into heroin. There was no way Victor could stay around after that. Not with his problem with drugs. Sherlock made sure to make himself unlovable and unretrievable, in summary, in what he thought was Victor’s best interest.”

“So Victor left.”

“Hm.” Mycroft purses his mouth. “Yes, he did. He thought that, if he left, Sherlock would not feel the need to keep going down that path of self-destruction he had set on, in order to push Victor away. There was really nothing he could do to help at that point, John. And Victor himself struggled very, very badly for many years after that.”

John’s brow pinches still deeper. He takes a deep breath.

“Victor loved him” he says, after a pause.

“Very much” confirms Mycroft.

“He is not a tosspot” says John.

A smirk on Mycroft’s face. In other people it might have been a quick chuckle. “No” he says. “He is a very decent, very kind, very generous man, with a good heart. Sherlock is lucky to have him as a friend. As would anyone.”

John breathes a deep sigh.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

Mycroft twirls the umbrella this way and that. “I would hate to sound condescending, John…”

John tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, and Mycroft actually smiles at him.

“...But if I had volunteered it, rather than you asking about it, I don’t think you would have listened” he says.

That would normally piss John off no end. But Mycroft must have a point, because it doesn’t.

John rests his head back, his eyes get lost into the void.

“Anyway, I must go now” says Mycroft, standing up.

John takes a second to reply.

“Thank you, Mycroft.”

“Do keep in touch, John.” He’s at the door.

“Oh, Mycroft” John stops him.

“Yes?”

John sighs. “Tell Sherlock I’ll see him at the wedding.”

Mycroft’s face lights up a little.

“I will, John. Bye bye now.” The door clicks shut.

 

*

 

The first of June is three weeks away. It feels like an eternity or like a wink, the sensation changing from one minute to the next.

John is as ready as he’ll ever be to see Sherlock again, which is to say not a lot, and he’s afraid, and excited, and confused, and hopeful, and sore, but what he isn’t, surprisingly, is hating anyone. He realises it one morning, out of the blue, apropos of nothing, and a wave of relief washes over him, like a crushing weight has been lifted, or like he’s thrown all the windows open and a fresh breeze is flooding in, shoving all the crap away. He feels transported back to a time he had all but forgotten about, when he woke up in the morning with the indomitable certainty that this might be the day he would get to kiss Sherlock at long last.

A grumpy, cynical part of him that has seen too much for its own -or John’s- good keeps trying to burst his bubble in preparation for disappointment; nobody has said the magic words, John Watson, not you, not Mycroft, and certainly not Sherlock. You might still be getting it all wrong.

Another part of him he didn’t even knew was there is screaming ‘what kind of a bloody idiot are you? what else do you bloody need? A contract signed in blood?’  And the most ridiculous part of it all? It’s Victor’s words, in Victor’s fucking bronze voice, that come back to him every now and then and give him a kick in the butt and put a spring in his step, three feet high. “ _He really can’t make it any clearer._ ”

 

And the part of him he thinks of as just himself? Well, that part just stumbled upon the realisation that he hasn’t oiled, or cleaned, or even so much as looked at the gun in his drawer since the night Sherlock went away with Victor. And though puzzled about why that is, he just can’t bring himself to think about it very much at all. John is looking forward to something now, it’s as simple as that. It’s a good feeling.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a monster. So this chapter has chapters. Hey! 3 for the click of one!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear all, a word of warning:  
> I’ve been with Victor for more than 5 months, 4 fics, 80000 words and almost 20 years of his life. During his journey, I’ve put him through all sorts of hell, drug addiction, heartache, depression, bereavement, and way too much loneliness.  
> This story is mainly about John and Sherlock, and I have tried to keep the focus there, but this is Victor's wedding, and he is going to get the love, and more than anything, the fluff he deserves, goddammit, because god knows he’s had to deal with more angst that you can wave a stick at. You might get some tooth-rot from this chapter, but this is my dearest baby, and he deserves to be happy, and it fucking starts here and now.  
> You have been warned.

1.

“I hope you will be comfortable here” says the girl —Alice, one of Alex’s sisters, an elegant, towering Walkyria of a woman in a floaty summer dress, long wheat-blonde hair swishing around, really pretty. John much rather prefers brunettes, but her long, curvy body is exactly the kind of thing he would have reacted to instantly not so long ago. He observes her now the way he does the room — it’s pleasant, but it does nothing special for him. John Watson, you are so, so taken.

“Thank you” says John. “It’s a lovely room.” It is. It’s bright, airy, and faces the meadow at the front of the house, only a broad countryside of rolling hills and woods to be seen for miles.

“It starts at six” says Alice, making for the door. “They’re serving drinks and some food in the green at the back of the house. Come when you’re ready.”

“I will. Thanks again.”

She pulls the door shut behind her.

John takes stock of the room, with a whole wall of narrow, ceiling-height windows dressed with pale yellow brocade curtains, the whole place sumptuously furnished with antiquarian pieces. It’s a palace. Why, of course, where else did he expect prince charming to live?

He doesn’t have that much time now. He extracts the suit from its zipped cover. It’s new. He suffered a fully-fledged meltdown one week ago trying to find what to wear. The shop assistant’s appreciative look when he tried this one on is what made up his mind. It’s a silver grey three piece, plain cream shirt —expensive though, the material is lovely to the touch— and she even convinced him to buy a matching tie and handkerchief for the chest pocket in… what colour did she say it was? Turquoise? _“It brings out your eyes”_ she had said, with a little smile that wasn’t altogether professional. She was pretty, bit too young for him. John had let himself be flattered by her attention. _“So who is getting married then?”_ she had asked while they waited for the electronic payment to go through, _“Not you, I hope?”_ a tiny, flirty grin. He had returned a mild smile. _“Me? God, no. Never again”_ he had replied, his tone more abrupt than he had intended. Her smile had fallen. _“Thank you. Have a nice day”_ she had said, cool and detached again. Oh well.

With the suit and all its trimmings set on the bed, he finds himself hesitating over the issue of underwear. Now, what’s the protocol on that? He wishes there was one, because otherwise it’s just him with his thoughts. What would Sherlock like? —the question manifests itself out of the blue, and it completely takes over his head. Good god, is this really happening? After all these years? He can’t believe it. And it won’t feel real until… until what? Until he’s… lying on top of him, making love to him? A sudden rush of boiling hot blood in his underbelly, and his chest and neck and face and ears flush bright red.

John Watson, you’ll jinx it, he admonishes himself.

For a second he thinks “sod underwear”, but a quick check suggests another layer of fabric between little John and the world, in such a public occasion, wouldn’t go amiss, because he hasn’t had sex in a long, long time —wanks don’t count— and his body is, shall we say, eager. You randy goat, you. At what age does one officially become a dirty old man.

Fucking white boxers, ok? Plain and simple. Comfortable. He even does the button up. Not that this will prevent any embarrassment if a situation was to arise, but let’s just call it psychological reassurance.

When he’s done, pocket hankie and all, he studies himself in the gilded-frame, full-body mirror in one corner of the room. Well, he is no Victor Trevor, but he looks fine, he tells himself as he straightens his tie. He does make the mistake of leaning closer to examine the bags under his eyes —worsened by the little sleep he’s been having-, his rough skin, his greying hair, and sighs again.

 _“This is about what Sherlock wants”_ sounds Victor’s voice in his head. And then _“He really can’t make it any clearer.”_

John, you need to take a deep breath, and trust Mycroft, and Victor, and trust yourself, and trust Sherlock. As much as faith does not come easily to him, there is only one way this can go right, and to a considerable extent, is up to him alone.

He makes for the door. With one hand on the handle, he takes one last deep breath. Right, John Watson. Into battle.

*

John had expected a crowd, but apparently it will be an intimate affair —there’s at best fifty people on the green, chatting away with champagne tubes in their hands. There is also a band of half a dozen children of different ages running around between people’s legs, screaming, laughing, chasing each other, always with the cream Labrador puppy Sherlock deduced in tow, and playing with garden games —there are bowling pins, croquet hooks and batts, a pile of gigantic Mikado sticks, skipping ropes, climbing ropes and tires hanging from the trees, and god knows what else. There is an ancient, pleasantly weathered marble gazebo ready with instruments and speakers on one corner, tables with food here and there, and benches and chairs dotted all over the area. Fairy lights hang from the trees circling the green, and colourful banners and ribbons. It will all look even lovelier when it gets dark. It’s a nice set up, more like a simple garden summer party than a wedding, with even less fanfare than his own do. Suits his spartan tastes better. He just didn’t expect outrageously posh people to share the just-the-essential-frills approach with an ex-army doctor from West London.

The long june afternoon is still bright, the light so warm setting the new leaves ablaze. And there is Victor, looking dapper, and so luminously cheerful, eyes so bright and wide, that John thinks to himself, without anything but kindness for the first time ever since he first set eyes on him, what a handsome bastard.

And when he moves aside, John sees he is talking animatedly to… Sherlock. His pale face, suffused in the afternoon slanting sun, so warm and mellow, looks softer and younger, melancholy under a small, tight-lipped smile. John sees Victor raise a hand and cup Sherlock’s jaw, with a quick stroke of the thumb over his cheekbone. He makes it look so easy. Sherlock doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull back, doesn’t avoid him. If his expression is anything to go by, he is actually comforted by Victor’s touch. John feels the stirrings of one ugly feeling or another hissing deep within -envy, he’d say, rather than jealousy, but who the fuck knows. A stern voice snarls inside his head to cut if off: don’t you bloody dare, John Watson. So he takes a deep breath, and a glass of white wine from a tray that sweeps by him, and starts walking towards them.

Victor spots him when he’s still only half way there. John sees him give Sherlock’s shoulder a quick squeeze and walk away, with one last look at John, and a nod. He has decided to give them space so that their first encounter is on their own terms, the bloody gentleman.

Now Sherlock spots him too. His eyes widen, and there is a stir in John’s heart when he sees him quickly sweep a hand on his simple black suit, and tidy up his hair, with a brief ruffle, as his ears go red. He looks so much like a shy little boy that it ties a burning knot in John’s throat. For the remaining few steps left to walk, neither manages to look at the other for more than one second.

“Hello” says John, once he is standing next to him.

Sherlock keeps his hands clasped behind his back and his head low. He might have said hello back but, if he does, John doesn’t hear it.

For a minute nobody speaks. Sherlock clears his throat, John gulps on nothing --he has even forgotten the drink in his hand.

“They didn’t tell you I was coming?” says John at last, trying to sound as much at ease as he can. Sherlock looks so off balance still.

“I told them they were insane” says Sherlock, his deep voice thrumming in John’s belly. “I might have laughed at them.”

John snorts. “Should I have jumped out of a cake?” He harrumphs. “Or maybe disguise myself as a waiter and shout ‘surprise!’”

“I have it on experience that this doesn’t yield good results.”

John laughs, much to Sherlock’s relief, he can tell -if that wasn’t a quick smirk in Sherlock’s mouth he doesn’t know what it was. And he takes a look around, because that well is dry now and they must find something else to say. But every opening John can think of is a minefield.

“Thank you for coming” says Sherlock after some time, when John wasn’t expecting it. “I know you hate these things.”

  
“Yes, well, no more than you.” He has a sip. This is edging dangerously close to hurt territory.

“But he’s not your friend” says Sherlock.

“Oh, I don’t know about that” says John, making a point of smiling. And he has to have another sip to wet his throat before he adds, “Anyway, I’m not here for Victor.”

Sherlock harrumphs. He looks as if there are more things he wants to say but can’t bring himself to talk, and it’s getting uncomfortable. Lend him a hand, John, say something.

“You look… well” John tries, and instantly wants to beat himself.

“Your powers of observation haven’t improved” retorts Sherlock, “I haven’t slept a wink. Even you should have been able to notice the dark marks under my eyes, uneven skin tone, overall tired demeanour, the patchy shave…? What?”

John is chuckling quietly. Sherlock’s usual snarky self is apparently restored, thank God. John really does not know how to tackle the shy little boy who tidies himself up for him. Rather than countering with more snark -just because they are able to bicker again without it quickly turning into poison doesn’t mean he feels like it-, he just says “I haven’t slept very well either.”

“Obviously” says Sherlock.

“But you still…” John clears his throat. Can he say it. Can he do it. Should he do it. Oh, bugger this. “You look very fine anyway. Very… very handsome.” Harrumph. “You look very handsome.” There, he’s said it. He sounded like an idiot, but he said it.

Sherlock’s eyes widen and become fixed in space, as a frown settles. After a few blinks, colour starts creeping up his neck and onto his cheeks. He gapes, shuts his mouth, gapes again, swallows. He looks like a little boy.

“Thank you” he says, in a small, choked voice.

“You’re welcome” says John, taking a sip of his drink, feeling immensely relieved for all of two seconds before awkwardness settles in again. He is looking around the green, trying to find something else to say, when the same small voice says “You too.”

John turns to Sherlock, whose cheeks are burning. He’s the loveliest thing John has seen in his whole life, and he aches to pull him to his chest and kiss that mouth. But he can’t make himself so much as lean closer to him. What are you so afraid of, John Watson? He has a quick fit of panic thinking that he will never be able to bridge that gap. More like an abyss than a gap. Perhaps he will never convince his brain that it’s ok, that he can reach for Sherlock and be welcome, after years and years telling himself to bottle it up, swallow it down and bury it deep, because it would never happen and that was it and get over it. Dammit, John, you are a nutter. What a fucking pair.

“So, where is the-the thing?” asks John, to say something. “The ceremony. You must know, right? You’ve been here before.”

Sherlock flinches and looks alarmed, and a little hurt.

John is puzzled. What? What just happened? He frowns in confusion, and then it hits him that Sherlock might be thinking he’s making a sly remark to, well, to what was between Victor and him; and Sherlock would have a reason to feel alarmed, because John has given ample proof in the immediate past that he doesn’t deal very well with… fuck, with Victor even existing. But John didn’t mean anything by that, he wasn’t trying to start anything, he swears. Oh, god, sort it out, Watson!

“I mean, it will start soon, we should make our way there, and I don’t know where it is, so we need to find someone who does…” he babbles. He knows he’s babbling. Get a hold of yourself, John, Sherlock looks anxious enough for the both of you already. At least one needs to keep his head. Perhaps if he asks a specific question, with a specific answer… “Just… Where do we need to go?”

“To the church.” says Sherlock then. “In that direction, on the edge of the property.” He clears his throat, hands still clasped behind his back.

“Shall we go, then?” says John. And he very nearly offers up his arm. And perhaps he bloody should have. Dammit, Watson, think faster!

They start strolling down the path. The wildflower meadow sways and whispers around them, insects buzzing and chirping and glinting like swarming tiny speckles of light. John feels peaceful, serene, for the first time that day —for the first time in weeks, come to think about it. Sherlock’s hand hangs at his side, and he could just reach for it, and it would feel so right. Go on, John, do it. It’s just a whisper away. Do it. Reach and it’s yours. Sherlock will let you, he will, just do it.

He doesn’t.

There’s a small bridge over a little, shallow stream, made golden by the sun so low, and a little grassy slope to climb before they make it to the edge of the church yard, a grey building surrounded by old gravestones, half of them toppled, crooked, covered with moss.

“We’re not going into the church?” asks John, when they pass by it.

Sherlock shakes his head, signalling ahead. There’s a gigantic oak that might be one thousand years old, roots protruding like arms and elbows from the ground. Four rows of chairs have been placed in a crescent shape under its thick, broad crown. There’s nothing else, no more decorations. People are taking their seats.

“This is where Victor’s parents’ ashes were scattered,” says Sherlock, “under the tree, and their gravestones are in the churchyard. But I don’t think Victor is big on god.”

John can’t look away from him as he speaks. His expression is thoughtful and kind, so unlike the hieratic, severe, cold mask he’s so often seen on him. It’s hard to believe this is the same man who was puzzled that a woman should still be upset about her baby daughter, still-born fourteen years ago.

They take two chairs in the last row. Quite a few of the seats are empty, probably because their intended users, a swarm of crazy children, are too busy chasing each other around, attempting to climb the oak and walking on the churchyard’s low drystone wall, while their parents take turns rounding them up periodically, and intervening whenever physical damage seems imminent.

Under the oak there’s an elegant, handsome, greying couple —the parents of the groom, guesses John— talking to who surely must be the registrar which will officiate at the wedding. Then a third person arrives.

“Christ, is _that_ Alex?” John gasps, eyes wide, taking in the tall, blond giant in the pale suit, one head taller than anyone else, shoulders broad, massive biceps bulging in his sleeves, his long hair in a bun, as dashing as a movie star.

John looks at Alex, then at Sherlock —so slight and bony—, then at Alex again, then at Sherlock again. He has a mocking smirk on his face. He can’t help it.

“What?” says Sherlock, frowning. John just smirks and keeps his peace. “What?” insists Sherlock, snappy.

“Nothing” says John, tightening his lips to stop himself from giggling like an idiot -it’s not that funny, but he is jittery.

“I could take him down easily” mutters Sherlock, arrogant, finally guessing the joke.

“Yes,” whispers John, “to court. If you ever make it out of hospital.”

Sherlock glowers at him. “It’s not all about the muscle, John” he says.

“Of course not” says John. “It’s also about height, weight, and motivation.”

Sherlock keeps glowering, but then a whisper of a smile starts tugging at his lips.

John laughs frankly. He turns to Sherlock, who has a very faint blush tingeing his cheeks, and catches his eyes dipping to John’s lips and quickly away. John’s stomach does a flip. You did not imagine that, John Watson, he tells himself, buzzing as if a swarm of hummingbirds had taken flight inside his chest.

While they were distracted, Alex’s parents have taken their seat, and Victor has appeared from somewhere to stand next to his beloved before the registrar. The grooms are smirking playfully at each other, while the official is saying a few words about Victor’s parents’ commitment to Donnithorpe and to the region, and how honoured and proud she is to be officiating. John has the distinct impression that Alex and Victor are having too much fun just trying to keep serious while trying to make the other laugh to have heard one word of it. Personally he finds it quite endearing, but the registrar is starting to look miffed.

“The grooms have written their own vows” states the registrar, loudly, making the kids snap out of it. “Who would like to go first?”

“You” says Alex. He has a deep, gruff voice, at odds with his boyish demeanour. “You always like to go first” he mutters under his breath, but in a tone he must realise it’s perfectly audible to everyone. For his efforts he gets a solid elbow into the gut, which Victor delivers without a flinch. Alex looks smug. John finds himself smiling, and realises he is not the only one. The viking’s easy, radiant grin is irresistible and highly contagious.

Victor takes a deep, shuddering breath. He’s nervous. Alex takes one of Victor’s hands between his, reassuring him with his big smile. Victor takes another breath.

“Alex,” he begins, “when we first met I thought you were too good to be true. I spent weeks and months waiting for the other shoe to drop, because there had to be some horrible flaw somewhere. So I was very relieved when I discovered that you snore like a bear, that you are physically incapable of admitting that you are wrong, and that your singing in the shower actually summons the thunderstorm.” Alex is giving Victor a mock angry squint. Victor smiles at him, more timid than John has ever seen him or could have ever imagined. “You said something on our first date” continues Victor. “You said that this could be the trip of a lifetime. And you were right.”

“As usual” mutters Alex, still smug, even through his mom’s severe glare and the fresh elbow that hits him square in the gut again.

But Victor is biting his lip not to laugh. He composes himself and continues. “Even if this was to end tomorrow, it’s already the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

And at this, John turns to Sherlock, whose expression is unreadable. He looks longingly to Sherlock’s hands, held together in front of him, just there. He could slid one of his between them. Sherlock would take it. Wouldn’t he? Maybe it would do him good.

“Whatever happens next,” Victor is saying, “every day we spend together is a gift. I intend to be grateful for each and every one of them and never, ever take you for granted.” He swallows, emotion taking its toll. His voice is weaker when he speaks next. “I never thought I had it in me to love and trust anyone as much as I love and trust you” he says. “And if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure that I deserve you.”

Alex has a huge, blinding smile as he hooks one hand around Victor’s neck and snags him close for a crushing kiss. “I love you, baby” he mumbles right against Victor’s mouth. Handkerchiefs have started to sprout among the attendants.

“Did I say you could kiss your groom?” smiles the registrar.

“You didn’t say I couldn’t” says Alex, unrepentant, his eyes locked on Victor’s still, a whole conversation taking place between them without need for one word.

Some people laugh, others sniff and snort.

When John steals a glimpse at Sherlock, he sees his expression is now decidedly melancholy.

“Whenever you’re ready” says the registrar to Alex, cutting John’s train of thought before it starts sinking down into gloomy, scary places.

It’s Alex’s turn to take a deep breath now, as he fumbles in the inside pockets of his jacket. He finds the piece of paper he was looking for and clears his throat, with a slight tremor in his hands. Some coughs and muttered comments between the attendants, a baby cries and her dad takes her away to rock her back to sleep

“You know I’m not as good with these things as you are” says Alex, not so cocky now, “so I’ve got this written down.” He clears his throat again. “I’ve loved you all my life” he says. “I loved you even before I knew you existed. I dreamed of you and imagined you, but I had started to believe that I would never find you. And just when I did not expect it anymore, you turned up.” He looks up to Victor, who couldn’t seem more in love if he had cartoon hearts in his eyes. “I didn’t know you would be so beautiful, and I didn’t know you would be a man, but I knew you would be the kindest, sweetest, funniest person in the world, and full of joy and life, and that you would have a heart as big as a house, and that you would always be looking for an adventure. I fall in love with you again every day. And if you’ll have me, I’ll make sure you never doubt how loved and treasured you are until the day I die.”

Victor sniffs, his efforts to hold back the tears fast failing him, while Alex puts away his piece of paper and holds his hands, rubbing his big thumbs soothingly on them.

Alex’s sisters are sobbing, his parents’ stiff upper lip is giving, and one of Victor’s American friends is blowing her nose expansively, with a trumpeting sound. Even the registrar has teared up. Sherlock looks serene, thoughtful, and John’s hand itches to touch that stray curl that has fallen on his eye.

The officer asks the perfunctory “Do you take this man as your husband”, to which Victor says “yes”, smiling like a million suns, and Alex answers “hell, yeah”, with a deep rumble that seems more fitting for the honeymoon. Two little girls turn up with the rings, and John rubs his bare finger and can’t help but remember how ridiculously difficult it is to put a ring on somebody else’s hand. He suddenly remembers her hands and it turns his stomach. Everything had felt wrong that day. But he had giggled, just as Victor is laughing as he tries to slide the ring on Alex’s big hands. What he had not done was get lost in her eyes like Victor does now, as if there’s nothing else in the world but the two of them. He loved her that day, but it wasn’t that. It could have never been that, because she was never everything for him. She could never have been. Alex and Victor have it all and are renouncing nothing. It had been a completely different story for John, who at his wedding had felt as if he was ripping himself apart.

“And _now_ you may kiss your husband” says the registrar, with the emphasis specifically aimed at Alex.

Alex hugs Victor for all he’s worth, lifts him one foot in the air and crushes their mouths together like he wants to devour him. Victor’s arms are wrapped around his man’s neck, his eyes shut tight, his expression blissful, and John wonders what it would be to hold Sherlock like that, to make him feel like that. Victor looks content, whole, home.

The audience erupts into cheers and applause.The children, that had been held in place until then by their parents, bolt free and dash to the newlyweds, pouncing on them, demanding to be held up in the air too. Alex and Victor break it up, reluctantly it seems, if their sluggish movements and their longing stares are anything to go by. It’s time to start accepting the people’s congratulations, and to dole kisses and hugs here and there.

Sherlock’s faint, fond smile grows when he sees Alex’s parents hugging Victor, Victor’s face affected, eyes welling up. Looking at the smile that warms up Sherlock’s whole face, those wrinkles around his eyes he knows so well, John marvels that he could have ever believed his bollocks line about being a sociopath. How could he ever think him unfeeling when he can smile like that. It takes his breath away.

Eventually, John and Sherlock exchange a look and decide silently that it’s time to approach the couple and do the thing. Victor’s eyes when he spots them both are brimming with light and love. He takes John’s hands and shakes them firmly, a tight-lipped smile, the bloody adorable dimples, eyes bright straight into his, and John has to gulp and cast his eyes down for a second, before he makes himself look at Victor again and smile back. If he was another kind of man, he would happily hug him. But he isn’t, so he just hopes that his face, always betraying his every thought and emotion, conveys all the regret for past slights, and the present gratitude and affection in his heart. Affection, because among all else, Victor once made Sherlock feel loved when so many would not, or could not, and John loves Victor - yes, loves him, dammit- for that.

And with these thoughts in mind, he feels nothing but warmth when Victor takes Sherlock in his arms for a long, crushing embrace, and warmth again when Sherlock returns the hug, with hope added to it, because the emotion in Sherlock is real and tangible, and if his heart beats for Victor, it can beat for John too.

Friendly and drama-free as it all seems, however, John does throw a look at Alex at this point, to shake hands with him and, hell, to find out if he should have brought his gun along after all. But Alex is smiling broadly, not one shred of jealousy or ill will when his now husband kisses his ex-boyfriend, whom he just fucked a few weeks ago, with his eyes closed. John does wonder how the hell Alex does it. As if he could read his thoughts, Alex darts his eyes to John and winks.

 

**  
  
**

 

2.

**  
  
**

On the walk back to the house, well behind the main group, Sherlock is quiet, thoughtful, remote. Something in the air between them has shifted. John has an awful feeling he can’t shake off.

“Are you alright, Sherlock?” says John.

“Perfectly fine” he says.

They walk in silence a bit more

“What I mean is…”

“I know what you mean” cuts Sherlock. “I’m fine.”

“Ok, alright, sorry for asking.”

John hears him gulping.

“No, I’m sorry” says Sherlock, his tone softer now. “I’m… this is… I’m nervous.”

It takes John a few more steps before he can bring himself to admit it. “Me too.”

It’s a fine afternoon. The weather is kind and bright. They’re well behind the rest of the party. They could be just having a stroll in the countryside. They should go back to Dartmoor. Perhaps he’ll bring it up one of the days. Go see Henry. They did promise to visit.

...Whoa, slow down, Watson.

“Sherlock”

“John”

They both spoke at the same time. John smiles. “Sorry, go ahead.”

“No, please.”

They both pause to let the other one go, then they both say in unison “It’s about Victor.”

Nobody is smiling now. The air has the distinct, metallic buzz of panic.

“Listen, John, about that night…” rushes Sherlock.

“No. Wait.” John scrambles to find the words. “Sherlock. You don’t need to… I don’t need you to apologise or…”

“I wasn’t going to apologise” cuts Sherlock.

John clears his throat. “G-good.”

“You thought I was going to apologise?” his tone curt.

“Er, I don’t know. Listen, Sherlock…”

“You think I _should_ apologise?”

Bugger, he won’t let it go, will he? “No!” exclaims John, irritated now. Calm down. “No… That’s not… No.” Deep breaths. “…No, I don’t think you should apologise, ok?, no.”

Sherlock purses his mouth. “Good. Because I wasn’t going to.”

“Ok. Fine. Great.” Just shut up, John, keep your big mouth shut for a bit, will you?

They both seem to find this a good idea, and nobody utters a sound for a while. The house is looming closer and closer.

Sherlock clears his throat. “That does not mean I don’t have regrets about that night” he says.

“Yes. Same here” replies John very quickly.

“What happened with Victor, however, is not one of them.”

John swallows on dry. “I understand.” Harrumph. “That’s fine.”

“Is it really.”

Huff. “Yes. It is.”

“Alright” says Sherlock, sounding far from convinced.

“Alright” says John. He takes another deep breath. Come on, John, say it. You owe it to him. “I have regrets too. I said many things that night that just were not… they were not true. I was… I was a coward. And an idiot. And I hurt you. And I’m sorry.” Another deep breath, his eyes firmly on his steps. “I’m deeply sorry.”

Sherlock clears his throat again. “John, since it seems we are on speaking terms again, perhaps we can do this another time.”

John feels both relieved and disappointed. “If that’s what you want” he concedes after some time.

“Yes, I would much prefer it” says Sherlock. “This is difficult enough as it is.”

John flinches. “You mean… Victor getting married” he says with a whisper of a voice.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “No, I mean the noise, the… people.” A grimace.

John can’t help a little smirk. He looked exactly like Mycroft then for a second. “But… you’re fine otherwise? With…?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself” snaps Sherlock.

“Ok, alright…” Cough cough. “Calm down.”

“I’m perfectly calm” says Sherlock.

“Fine” says John. “Just… fine.”

It seems safer to carry on without another word until they’re back in the green, where everyone else is already gathered.

Everything is piling up in a coordinated effort to make John feel like finding a rock somewhere to go and spend the evening under --the bustle of the happy guests, mingling and chatting and laughing, and the children darting around like demented wind up toys. He wants to get away now. On the one hand he wishes to be alone with Sherlock. On the other hand, he is quite sure that this is not as good an idea as it sounds. Oh well. There is nothing to be done about it. He gets a glass of champagne for himself and one for Sherlock —to have something to do with their hands— and resigns himself to a very, very long evening and, most likely, a big headache at the end of it.

Perhaps they should eat something, thinks John as his second gulp of champagne goes straight to his head, making it feel light, chasing the glass of wine on an empty stomach he had earlier. They make for the table where the food is set. John helps himself to sandwiches and watches Sherlock stuff his mouth with tea cakes and scones as if he hadn’t eaten for days. Which, knowing him, could very well be.

He raises an eyebrow. “Hungry, aren’t you?”

“Mupht you alwayph phtate the obviouph” says Sherlock, his words muffled in cake. There’s a smudge of clotted cream on his bottom lip. John can’t take his eyes off it.

“What?” asks Sherlock, crumbs flying from his mouth.

“Nothing. You just… On your lip” he points to the general area.

Sherlock’s tongue flicks out and misses entirely, unless its aim was to make John’s ears burn and his crotch contract. Sherlock raises an eyebrow, uncomprehending.

“Nope. Still there” says John, sounding a lot more composed than he feels.

Sherlock licks again.

John grumbles, hiding his bother under a liberally applied coat of frustration. He rubs a thumb on the blob of cream —and Sherlock’s lip—, wiping it away, not-entirely-accidentally cupping Sherlock’s jaw in the process, his eyes flicking from Sherlock’s mouth to his eyes and back to his mouth again, before withdrawing his hand and rushing to stuff his own face with a big bite of his sandwich and a deep gulp of champagne. It’s a bad idea. The two flavours don’t combine well. He swallows as soon as he can, and clears his throat with more champagne. He just wishes for some tea right now, or perhaps a beer.

And he hasn’t heard one sound from Sherlock for a couple of minutes. He turns to find him with his eyes lost in space, face blank, mild shock just on the edges.

John would say something, but he has been robbed of breath. That expression on Sherlock’s face has to be the loveliest, most adorable thing in the whole of creation, and John’s chest is bursting with love for the man who wears it. And all he can do is stare like an idiot and ache with the wish to cuddle him. It must be painted on his face in big capital neon letters. Even Sherlock should be able to see it this time, if only he was looking. John blushes from the tips of his ears down to his toenails and looks away.

Something is happening at the other end of the green, thank goodness, and John gets to turn his attention elsewhere. The guests have gathered around the gazebo, the newlyweds in the middle, and the mother-in-law has taken the stage and seems about to say a few words.

“Well, my dears,” she starts. “Since you had no best man, we thought it would be nice if anyone who feels like it comes up here and says a few words. I’ll start. I just want to say how proud I am, Alex, of the man you’ve grown up to be, and how happy I am that you’ve found such a good person to live your life with. Victor, my darling, we welcomed you into the family as soon as we saw how happy you made our son, and how good you are to him. I want you to know that we love you as our own. So Alex, you heard that, take good care of him, or else.”

Victor is smiling, teary-eyed, and Alex hugs him and kisses him, hamster cheeks full of cake.

They get no respite, no time to get their breath back. Alex sisters, all four of them, come next, the brothers-in-law right after, all taking turns to embarrass and tease them, and making sure to kill them dead with some moving final words. Then the whole horde of kids climb up -even the baby girl, in her older brother’s arms- , and the oldest one reads a little piece about how funny and strong uncle Alex is, and how kind unkie Vic is, and how he always tells them stories and plays songs for them, and that they can’t wait to have more cousins, and a little girl -about five years old, John thinks— says “don’t cry unkie Vic!” and jumps to hug him. By which point rivers are being cried by the small crowd, while John feels a little bit like the man who watches the flood go by him from the top of a small hill —with respect, but also no small relief that it does not affect him.

Sherlock, who vanished without a word of explanation in the middle of the mother-in-law’s speech, has turned up again. John almost throws a quip about him not being able to stomach all that sentiment, but decides against it. Even if he wasn’t trying his best tonight to avoid getting caught up in a snark contest, the look on Sherlock’s face would have shut him up anyway. He looks affected, a frown firmly set on his brow and his lips tight. John doesn’t need anyone telling him it’s not the time to crack up jokes about how Sherlock deals with emotion.

Only when Sherlock makes his way to the gazebo does John notice the violin in his hands.

“I know I said I wouldn’t” says Sherlock from the stage, and opens his mouth as if he was about to say something else, but then seems to think twice and shuts it again. And he begins to play.

John turns his eyes towards Victor, who is listening with an expression of surprise and recognition growing in his face as the piece unfolds.

John finds himself struggling to swallow around a very tight knot in his throat, swamped with the memories. But this song is very different from both their waltz and what he has come to call in his head Irene’s song. There is very little darkness in what Sherlock is playing now. There’s joy and sunlight and fun and life, quick, light notes that climb and swirl, like a birdsong. It’s not as polished as the more recent stuff John is used to hear, but it’s arresting, captivating, and beautiful. John doesn’t need explaining that Sherlock wrote that for Victor a long time ago. The music spells Victor’s name, and Victor’s face as he listens, entranced, touched to the core, tells the rest.

When Sherlock is finished, he takes a gracious bow. The guests are cheering enthusiastically, but Sherlock’s eyes are set on Victor, on the smile on his face, faint on the lips, glowing warmly in his eyes. When Sherlock climbs down from the stage, Victor wraps him in his arms tightly for a long time. Long enough that John has to look away. He glances instead at Alex, who still hasn’t shown one hint of jealousy, not a smidge of anything but kindness and joy in his eyes. Not for the first or the last time tonight, John wishes he knew his secret.

There are still a few more speakers —Mrs. Northam, who minds the house and the collection, the old head gardener, Victor’s friends from New York—, and finally the newlyweds take the stage, Alex wrapping Victor’s waist from behind his back, hands clasped around him.

“We just want to thank you all for being here” says Victor, his voice strained. “It means a lot to us. We’re very lucky to have you. Specially me. Thanks to Alex, I’ve gone from being an orphan to being part of a huge and loving family, and I’m so grateful. You’ve taken me in and… Nuts.” His voice breaks and he rubs his eyes. “I love you all so much” ends Victor. Alex tightens his hold on him and kisses his neck.

Cheering from the guests. Then Alex takes the mike.

“Yeah, what he said. About taking him into the family, yeah, I’m so very grateful for that too. I’ve grown up with four sisters, and I always wanted a brother. I must have been incredibly miserable in another life, because I have everything in this one. Thank you. And you, come here.” He pulls Victor into a kiss that starts as a peck and escalates very quickly to melting-into-each-other territory. Not far from John, a bunch of kids are giggling, covering their mouths and mocking a big Hollywood kiss. The older ones are making gagging noises.

“Get a room!” shouts one of the brothers in law.

“Carry on!” shouts one of Victor’s exuberant American girlfriends.

 

It’s dark now, the fairy lights are on, and lanterns have been lit all over the place. The band take their positions on the gazebo. John had noticed the singer at the ceremony, a girl with long dreadlocks, coffee-coloured skin and huge blue eyes.

“I love you guys” she says. “Alex I’ve known since he was a brat, but I feel like I’ve known you Victor for just as long. You’re my best friends in the world. I’ve seen you fall in love and get to where you are today. If you remember, Alex, I called it after about five minutes of seeing you together, not only because you were both practically drooling with love, but because I’ve never seen two people so right for each other as you two. Anyway. You told me to choose your song, but you guys already did that a long, long time ago.” She nods to the band and they start playing. “I hope you like it” she says, and waits for her cue.

The newlyweds smile widely when they recognise the song. Alex’s grin is huge. He rubs his eyes hard, holding back the tears.

_“I can hear her heartbeat from a thousand miles, and the heavens open every time she smiles. And when I come to her, that’s where I belong. Yet I’m running to her like a river’s song. She gives me love, love, love, love, crazy love…”_

John is quite sure it’s Van Morrison, and he’s also quite sure that Alex wasn’t expecting that, and that he’s moved very deeply. Victor curls up in Alex’s bear hug, with his eyes shut, and lets Alex sway him slowly side to side. John thinks again how young, even vulnerable Victor looks, his guard lowered, safe in his man’s arms. John would never have imagined that Victor could appear anything less than sharp and unassailable, so full of confidence, so elegant. Whichever is the key that unlocks the softer core within, Alex has got it.

John wonders if Sherlock had it too, once, if he still has it now. He turns to him, and finds him looking on, wistful, longing. Before he can help himself, he wonders painfully whether Sherlock is mourning what he once lost, or what he lost today.

_“Yes it makes me righteous, yes it makes me whole. Yes it makes me mellow down into my soul. She gives me love, love, love, love, crazy love…”_

It’s a very good song to cuddle up to. He turns to look at Sherlock once more out of the corner of an eye, and finds him staring at him point blank. John looks away, heart racing, but after an instant he makes himself look up again. Their eyes remain locked for the remaining of the song. John feels his heart thumping in his chest, a sensation of ice in his throat.

The clapping and whooping wakes him from his trance. He only just catches the end of Alex and Victor’s kiss. The band attacks something snappier. The party starts shaking to it, the children favouring jumping up and down and running and screaming around as their preferred dancing moves, the Labrador puppy being rescued and kept in Alex’s arms to keep her safe from harm. She looks minuscule in his big hands.

John and Sherlock, without a single word, perform a synchronised evasive manoeuvre and retreat to a quieter place. They sit down at a safe distance from the party, on a bench under a tree, untouched champagne glasses in their hands. It’s darker there, far from the circle of light the lanterns cast. The night is breezy and fragrant. Very romantic, thinks John, shyly stealing glances of Sherlock’s face every now and then. Like an eight year old who is trying to muster the courage to ask his crush to the dance.

They sit in silence for some time.

“Are you alright?” John brings himself to ask at last.

“You keep asking me that” says Sherlock, short. Then he seems to regret it and answers, “Yes, I’m fine.”

They stay quiet a bit longer.

“And you?” says Sherlock then.

That takes John out of step. “Me?”

“The memories” says Sherlock.

John puts on a vague smile. “I don’t think about it much.”

“Yes you do.”

“Yes I do.” John laughs a nervous chuckle. Busted. “But I’m alright. I’m…” Courage, John. “It’s in the past. I’ve…” Cough. “I’ve moved on. A long time ago.”  Harrumph harrumph, more courage. “It must have been hard for you, though.”

Sherlock huffs, irked.

“What?” says John.  Sherlock doesn’t reply and keeps looking irritated. “What?” insists John.

“How many times, John” double-huffs Sherlock, out of patience. “I am fine. I’m happy for Victor and I’m not…”

“No, sorry, no.” John clears his throat once more. “I meant my… my wedding.”

He tries to see Sherlock’s expression out of the corner of his eye as he says this. Sherlock’s face has suddenly gone very still. He could choose to take the ‘I don’t understand what you mean’ route very easily. And John wouldn’t blame him.

After a long while comes a muffled whisper. “The hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life.”

John’s eyes shut tight over the sudden stab to his chest. And without a thought, he takes Sherlock’s hand. And Sherlock holds on fast. It’s an iron grip, as if they were hanging on for dear life over the edge of a precipice.

Ask me again why I kissed you, prays John. Ask me now.

They stay like that for an age, until John starts to feel anxious, uncertain what to do or where to go with it next. He can’t move forward, he is not even sure what forward means. He does not know when he starts feeling silly and self-conscious, holding hands there, in silence, until he is overwhelmed by it and he needs to shake Sherlock off to down the rest of his drink, incapable of looking at him.

And his heart sinks. Even with his palm hot and his crushed bones and clamped muscles throbbing, already it feels as if it hasn’t happened. Worse, it feels as if it can’t possibly happen again, now that he’s let go.

The silence stretches forever onwards, discomfort building up, rising to intolerable levels. This is not what was supposed to happen, it’s not how it was supposed to be. John feels sick.

“I’m… sorry,” he mutters, standing up, “I need to… Sorry.”

“Of course” says Sherlock, with a low, dejected sigh of a voice. It’s agony to hear and excruciating to watch.

John walks vigorously away, as if trying to outrun the nausea that’s rising up in him. He turns his head for a second, only to catch a glimpse of Sherlock, half in darkness, head low, his shoulders severely slumped. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Get yourself together, John. He must be thinking you’re panicking over having held his hand. God knows what he’s making of that.

He buckles over with the need to retch, dry heaving a couple of times. False alarm. His head feels light and he crouches down.

Deep breaths. Deeeeeep breaths. Calm down. Calm down. It’s all fine. Nothing’s broken. You’ve both come back from worse. Come on, John, get back there and… and tell that man you love him. Right the fuck now. Before you drop any more bollocks out of your seemingly endless fucking supply.

It must have been fifteen minutes since John went away to suffer an anxiety attack. When he returns to the spot, Sherlock isn’t there. John scans around and spots him dancing with Victor near the gazebo.

Well, then.

John sighs about as deeply as his diaphragm allows. He shuffles to a bench and sits down. He welcomes with surprise the lack of jealousy he finds himself experimenting —if one can be said to experiment the lack of an emotion. It might have something to do with having seen Victor and Alex together. Even with his green eyes, John can tell the difference between the deep fondness Victor shows for Sherlock and the burning adoration he patently feels for Alex. And John has not noticed Sherlock stealing shy glimpses of Victor’s face and blushing. If coming here tonight achieves nothing else, at least John has got himself some serenity out of it. Bless this wedding.

Without the turmoil of rage and jealousy fogging his brain, he finds he is able to appreciate what he sees -Sherlock dancing with someone who doesn’t have two left feet. It’s a novelty, and delightful at that. Although there is a dark cloud over Sherlock’s head, plain for all to see, being spun and turned around in Victor’s arms seems to lift it somewhat. They’re having fun. By the end of the song, Sherlock is actually laughing. He looks so beautiful John finds himself staring with a stupid loved-up smile on his face.

The next one is a bit slower. Victor pulls Sherlock to him, raising an eyebrow, with half a smirk. He’s only just playing at it, but that face is still pure sex —it so often is with Victor, he doesn’t seem to be able to help it. John sees Sherlock roll his eyes and shake his head as if exasperated, but he doesn’t see him push him off exactly. And John really doesn’t know what to feel about that. Perhaps he doesn’t have to feel anything.

John notices Alex meandering around, apparently catching a break from his ever-so-slightly smothering family. He spots John, and veers towards where he is sitting, champagne glass in his hand. John’s pulse starts to race. He feels on edge whenever Alex is near. He could tell himself the reason is what happened between Victor and Sherlock, but it wouldn’t be the whole truth. The fact is, the man intimidates him, so golden, charismatic, so unbearably handsome, and all that bloody muscle. It’s like being around a Hollywood star. It makes John feel small and plain. Until his eyes are on you, thinks John, then you feel like you’ve won the lottery. John thinks he’s entitled to feel edgy, given the circumstances.

Alex raises his glass to John in silence, just his dazzling grin for a salute. “Want to dance?” he says, showing his small, bright, perfect teeth.

John’s heart makes to bolt from his chest like a mad bull from its stall. “M-me? With…?”

Alex smile only widens. His jacket is off, his tie hangs loose on his chest, the top buttons of his shirt are undone, the bun that was taming his hair at the start of the evening is letting go, long threads of golden hair framing his handsome face. John had dreamed of boys like this simply noticing him when he was the runt of the rugby team in high school. He swallows hard. And again.

“God, no” he chokes out. A little chuckle to disguise his nerves. “I don’t dance. Well, I do, when forced. But I’m awful. No. No thanks.” Picturing himself like a tiny red jelly bean in this bear of a man’s arms, he blushes so hard he’s possibly entering the purple range. Good job it’s dark.

“Fair enough” says Alex. His semi-divine smiles never once dwindles. “May I sit down?”

John gestures to the spot by his side for an answer. He’s had enough of hearing himself babble and stutter.

After some time sitting in silence, watching Sherlock and Victor dancing together easily, with grace, John feels pretty much back in control again. As it turns out, to see the man you love look bloody perfect in the arms of his ex-lover has a deeply sobering effect. Who would have guessed.

“I’m not as good as Vic” says Alex, after a specially quick turn by the dancers. “But I try. You’ve got to, don’t you?” A broad smile. “I always thought I would end up with a woman” he adds. “Life, eh?”

John whips his head around.

“You’re… bisexual?” he asks before he can stop himself -he sees Grandma Watson in his head wagging a finger at him; _“Johnny, we do not ask these things!”_

But Alex just says “Yeah” like it’s nothing —it’s evidently not a big deal to him. “Anyway, when something is right, is right, right?” he sips at his drink, his eyes on his husband.

John claws his free hand nervously by his side a couple of times. He doesn’t want Alex to see it though. A sip of his drink, for something to do.

“So, John, are you bi or is it just Sherlock?” asks Alex.

John spits his drink. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry” says Alex, hands in front of him in an appeasing gesture. “You asked, so I thought it was ok to ask.”

John wipes his mouth, a frown deeply set on his brow. But you did ask, Johnny.

“You’re right, sorry” he says after some time. Claw, unclaw, claw, unclaw. “I am.” Harrumph. “I’m bi. I’m bisexual” he makes himself say. Harrumph.

Deep sip of champagne —a quiet toast for one. To John Watson. First time in his life he’s said it out loud.

Alex stares right into his eyes and nods, and raises his glass as well, as if he could read minds. John smiles tightly. They clink their glasses together. John exhales.

And back to our regular programme now. “But Sherlock and I, er, we’re not a couple.”

“I know” says Alex.

John frowns again, while Alex holds his stare.

“Are you trying to say something, Alex?”

Alex grins with half his mouth. “Yes.”

“Then why don’t you just say it?”  John dares him, curtly, shoulders tense.

“All I’m saying is” starts Alex calmly, “why don’t you ask Sherlock to dance?”

John feels the sarcastic, self-deprecating grin as it slithers onto his face. He squints at Alex under his frown, searching his expression for he knows not what. Mockery? There isn’t any. Intent? There’s plenty of that.

“It’s complicated” he says in the end.

Alex shrugs. “I suppose it can be, if you let it.”

John is still searching his expression for cracks in that impassive Olympian poise of his. Alex is not stupid, and he must know the whole of it  —all about his husband and the man he’s dancing with right this minute, their bodies pretty much glued from head to toe— and still there’s nothing but good will coming through him. If there was a time to drop the act, John thinks, this is it. But the act, if that’s what it is, isn’t even flagging.

“Are you really alright with…?” John falters. A delicate way to put it is not presenting itself, probably because it does not exist.

“With Victor fucking Sherlock the other night?” Alex offers for him.

John harrumphs. Is that what happened then? Are we talking postures? He can hear the flush creeping up his neck. He gulps. “Yes.”

Alex sighs and rubs the back of his golden head. The serene gladness that seems to be his default expression hasn’t dwindled one bit.

“Vic and Sherlock have a very long story together” he says. “A very sad and fucked up one in many ways. But you know all about that.” Alex inquires with a raise of his eyebrows, John doesn’t really confirm nor deny. He himself is not sure how much he really knows, or even how much there is to know. Alex shrugs and continues. “Anyway, the way I see it, it was before either of us, you or me, came along, and it’s theirs, their own thing. It doesn’t affect my thing with Victor. I know Sherlock means a lot to Vic, that he has a massive soft spot for him, and I think he always will. And fuck, I have eyes, yeah? I know it’s not platonic. But that’s fine. I mean, it’s what it is. I can refuse to see it or I can get really pissed off about it, but that won’t make it less true. I could give Vic hell for it, or go around forbidding him to see Sherlock or god knows what, but I’ve sort of made a vow of making him happy, and if I know one thing, I know that this would not be the way to do it.”

Alex wets his throat with a long draught of champagne, and checks on John, who is frowning deeply.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” continues Alex, “if this was to become a regular feature I would have a problem with it. I don’t want an open relationship, I want Vic all to myself, what can I say. If I was not enough for him, we would have to talk. But that’s not how it is. Victor has told me that and I believe him. So. Things happen. It’s not the end of the world. And the make up sex was epic. But you probably don’t need to hear that.” He laughs genially and, John could swear, under all that gold there’s some flustering going on. “Anyway, seriously now. Vic and Sherlock’s story is all part of his life, of who Vic is. The way I see it, you can’t love someone and decide you want some pieces of their pasts or their hearts away. It doesn’t work like that. It’s a case of like it or lump it, or you become a very miserable bastard indeed. So, yeah, to answer your question, I’m ok with what happened. It changes nothing. It’s alright.”

John has listened, he has. He sees the sense in it. It’s just…

“But… aren’t you… afraid?” he asks.

“Afraid?” Alex ponders. “Of losing him? To Sherlock?”

John purses his mouth, uncertain of what to say. When John has felt jealousy all this time, he knows it now, it was fear he felt, but he can’t really specify of what.

“Anyone” he says, a breath above a whisper. Right now, he is a bit afraid himself. Afraid that he’ll have to dig up his close combat training, because he is sure this is not a subject one broaches with the groom on his wedding day.

But Alex, being of the gentle giant persuasion, doesn’t take it the wrong way. His handsome face warms up with a tight-lip smile, and he stares into space looking like a man who doesn’t have a care in the world.

“Let me tell you a story” he says. “When I first met Vic… Let me start over. Because I first met Vic when we were twenty-one, but it was for like half and hour, so it doesn’t count.” A smile. “When I met Vic again four years ago, well, I could tell he was impressed, yeah? Like he really, really, really wanted to get inside my pants. But when I told him I wasn’t into casual things anymore, he backed away so fast he left skid marks, and he didn’t stop pretty much until he hit the Arctic circle, yeah? He did not do relationships, he said. At all. That had been going on for, what, ten, eleven years? Since Sherlock left him. And in this time, he had had a fuckton of lovers, and I’m sure many were not only fun, but decent people who would have wanted to look after him. And yet, for ten years, he had not had a single boyfriend, not one. And it’s not like he didn’t need it, ok? He was really lonely. He likes people, he needs people to love and he needs people to care for. But he refused himself all of it all these years. That’s how little faith he had that he could make anything work, and how afraid he was of getting hurt again. All that time, he had not found anyone worth risking it for, anyone he wanted to trust and put his heart on the line for. That’s ten years, yeah? Got that? Well, here we are today, four years on. He’s married me, we’ve put papers in to adopt. What can I say, John, this makes a bloke feel pretty special.” He laughs, casts a loving gaze to his husband. “No, sir, I’m not afraid to lose him. Not to Sherlock, not to anyone else. He’s home now.”

John keeps himself quiet for a long, long time, a lump in his throat. He looks to Victor and Sherlock chatting while they dance. They’re nothing if not perfectly correct and decent, but John can sense the closeness between them, the complicity in the way they touch, the way they move together. It’s an intimacy John has no access to, an intimacy John didn’t even know Sherlock was capable of, and that, he must admit, does sting. Not that they’ve ever been really at ease around each other, because there has always been a deep, big, fat, unspoken issue hanging in the air between them, but as of late, ever since that kiss, the stiffness had set into rust. How strange to see Sherlock as a sensual creature who has fun, and with something as simple as dancing. How painful that it’s not with him.

Alex is observing him, he realises. John puffs out the breath he did not know he was holding. He sounds weary to his own ears.

“It must be a great feeling” says John out of the blue, his eyes low. “What you were saying just.”

Alex regards him fondly. He smirks. He almost looks as if he is going to extend a hand and ruffle John’s hair. He’d better not. “Well,” says Alex, wisely not ruffling anybody’s hair, “from what Victor says, John, you should know just as well.”

John studies him briefly before he casts his eyes down again, to the dwindling bubbles rising from the bottom of his glass. He swallows thickly. He is not sure what to say to that.

“Anyway.” Alex drinks up and sets his glass down. “I’m going to ask my dashing husband for the next one.” He stands up and sweeps a hand on his trousers to help them fall well again -mighty well, even, in spite of the deep creases already set in the fabric after so much wear (John, stop fucking staring.) “If I were you,” says Alex, oblivious, “I’d get there and steal Sherlock. You don’t know my sisters. If they get to him first, they won’t even leave you the crumbs.”

John pulls on a small, sad smile.

Alex offers a hand. “Nice talking to you, John. Thanks for coming today.”

John shakes his hand. “Thank you. And, ehm, good luck to you both.”

Alex nods once, eyes bright intent on his. “You too.”

John nods back. Alex lets go and makes his way to the party.

John watches him wait a good four paces away from Victor and Sherlock while the song starts to die away. Only when they’ve come apart from each other does Alex take one step forward, hands clasped behind his back, as if trying to make himself smaller, and take a little bow. Sherlock immediately steps aside, with a little close-lipped, perfunctory smile, that warms up into genuine when Victor kisses him on the cheek, right on the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. It’s a goodbye kiss, John can tell —something in the smile on Victor’s face, or in his eyes; it’s hard to point out, but it’s there.

Then Victor holds his husband’s hand and he’s gone, really gone, without having moved another step further. The newlyweds come close, find each other’s eyes and that’s it, there is nothing more, and no-one else. Victor burrows in his husband’s arms that wrap him strongly, and anyone could see he is really home.

**  
  
  
**

 

3.

**  
  
**

Sherlock looks… adrift, John has no better word for it. Hands behind his back, his upper body arched in a slight forward tilt, eyes cast down. John has seen this exact same look on Sherlock before, as he himself danced away with his new wife. And how he had tried not to see it that day. He could not face the vulnerability in it, because this was bloody Sherlock Holmes, goddammit, and at the time it wasn’t even certain that he had a fully-functioning heart, let alone one that could feel as lonely and hurting as the look he had seen on Sherlock’s face. Because John could not think of any way to soothe it that he could truly offer —that he had any right to offer— and at that point he couldn’t see Sherlock being able to accept it anyway.

How things change, and in how many unexpected ways.

John drinks up. He wishes there was more, and he wishes he had drunk it faster. It will have to do. He stands up, battling against his own mind —terrified of rejection, but no less terrified of success— for every inch he gains. He makes his way there, self-consciously aware of just how stiff and soldierly his bearing has become. He can’t help it. It’s his default setting when he must will himself to do things against his most basic instinct of self-preservation.

Sherlock hasn’t spotted him yet. His eyes are still cast down, unfocused, his shoulders low.

John doesn’t know what he’ll say, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do, and he would probably appreciate having a plan he can stick to, but he’s almost there and he hasn’t thought of any. He grapples for words in his mind, formulas perhaps, anything. “May I have this dance” is stuck at the front of his brain, and he’s very concerned that this is exactly what will pop out of his mouth. He’ll never live that one down. Oh well. Sherlock may I have this dance. Sherlock do you want to dance. Sherlock can we dance. Sherlock…

Two nieces and one nephew grab Sherlock’s hands and pull him away in a whirl.

John just freezes as he watches Sherlock with one kid strapped to one leg, another one spinning on himself while latching onto Sherlock’s hand, and another one standing on his shoes, tightly wrapped around his waist. He struggles for air when Sherlock’s puzzled smile takes over his angular face, softening it, illuminating it.

He wants to weep. Not sure why. Because the chance has flown, again. Because they would have had a daughter had things been different, and John would have been able to see that expression of bewildered joy on Sherlock’s face everyday. Because he loves him and he craves for him, his hands clasping around fleshless, skinless air, and he’s had enough, and more than fucking enough, and at some point tonight the last straw has landed on him and he feels he is crumbling under the burden.

So he turns around and sits himself on a chair and he thinks that, if anybody has been watching him, he must cut a pathetic figure, but he’s so very much beyond giving a toss he doesn’t even try to put a brave face on it. So, miserable it is.

Alex’s family keeps Sherlock busy for a whole hour. Alex’s sisters are really working him hard, and the whole throng of children —the ones that are still awake, that is— all want their go as well. More than once or twice, John catches Sherlock’s eye on him. Sometimes Sherlock puts the faintest smile on his face, other times he looks away quickly.

John still feels a flutter in his belly every time their eyes meet. Even tired and deflated as he feels, John still finds it in himself to marvel at the fact that he’s a fully grown man, past half his life, and he can still be made to squirm and shiver like a fucking teenager in love. It has its downsides, of course —the ball of lead heavy in his stomach, around which the butterflies must surely struggle to find the room to fly— but it makes him feel alive.

Meanwhile, Alex and Victor have been dancing with one another for the past hour. For the last twenty minutes, they have been ignoring the music and dancing to the mellow, romantic tune in their own heads. For the past five minutes, they’ve been snogging like they’re alone in the world. The only reason to suspect Alex’s hands are not glued to Victor’s arse is that, every now and then, they creep under his untucked shirt and slither up and down Victor’s back. Victor’s arms are mostly around Alex’s neck, or threading in his hair, now loose —Alex looks wild— and what had started as “Awww’s” and “Oooh’s” among the attendants is fast becoming full-blown blushing or a stubborn refusal to acknowledge them. The older children, once more, are having a field day with their pretend retching noises.

The newlyweds seem to realise, eventually, and that’s when they make a quick round of goodnights, jackets never straying far from their crotch area. It’s a very quick round, only the mother-in-law actually gets a kiss, the rest have to make do with a wave;  they’re evidently eager to get it over and done with and on to more pressing matters. They stride to the house holding hands as everybody tries to ignore them.

“What the f…?” they hear Victor shout then. They all turn to see that Alex has lifted Victor bodily in his arms, in proper bridal manner. “Put me down _youfffmmgblll_ …!” Alex has shut him up with a kiss and they cross the threshold. He kicks the door shut behind him.

The band starts playing, and only then does people seem to realise they had stopped at all. Nervous chuckles, a look of quiet, humorous resignation from the parents-in-law, and then it’s back to dancing. “It’s only eleven” John hears someone say. “I’m surprised they lasted this long” laughs one of the sisters, “they hadn’t seen each other in all of two days, and you know how they are...” A few more chuckles and good-natured raunchy jokes ensue.

It puts a smile on John’s face. Victor and Alex do seem to have their priorities straight. He toasts to them in his mind. Perhaps he should get himself one last drink and call it a day as well.

Sherlock seems to have had the same idea. They meet by the bar. They stand beside each other awkwardly, waiting for the waiter to uncork a fresh bottle.

John clears his throat. “You seem to be having fun” he says.

“You don’t” retorts Sherlock.

“No, I’m not.” John chuckles. “I’ll be going to bed soon I think.”

Sherlock nods once. His expression is blank, and John reminds himself that he might just be projecting the disappointment he thinks he sees there. They get their glasses.

This song. He knows it.

_“What day is it? And in what month? This clock never seemed so alive. I can’t keep up and I can’t back down. I’ve been losing so much time…”_

Harrumph. “Is this a, hm, like a waltz?”

“Not ‘like’” says Sherlock. “It is exactly a waltz. Many pieces of popular music are built on the parameters of classic ballroom rhythms.”

John nods. “Many, eh?”

“You’d be surprised at how many of U2’s songs are actually a cha-cha” says Sherlock.

“Really?” Just to say something. John clears his throat. “Well, I happen to be able to dance the waltz.”

“Barely” jabs Sherlock. “Your grasp of the theory was rudimentary at best. Your practical abilities left much to be desired.”

John sips at his drink, eyes wide open, speechless for a second. “I was going to say I had a great teacher, but I don’t think I will now” he counters.

Sherlock keeps silent for a good minute. “Do you think I’m a great teacher?”

“Actually, no. You were short-tempered and impatient, and I don’t think you said I was doing fine once.”

“That’s probably because you weren’t doing fine” snaps Sherlock. And then frowns, as if he wished he hadn’t said that. “Then why were you going to say you had a great teacher?” he asks.

“I was going to try to be nice.”

Sherlock blinks. “Oh.”

John has another solid draught of his champagne. Come on, Watson, we can still salvage this, somehow. “So perhaps, hm, I could… use some more practice. …At this-this waltz thing.”

“I’m not sure you’re not completely hopeless, to be frank” says Sherlock. “Perhaps with a better teacher” he quips, pissy.

John huffs, exasperated, eyes tight shut in exhaustion, rubbing his brow. “You probably just want to shut up now and help me out a little here.”

“Which one is it, John, shut up or help you out? Make up your mind.”

John throws him a homicidal glare.

Sherlock blinks, looking chastised. “Help you what?”

Deep sigh. “What I’m trying to-to say… What I’m-I’m asking…” John clears his throat deeply. “Ifyouwandancewithme.” Bugger. Very smooth, John.

“Beg your pardon?” says Sherlock.

John studies his face, just in case he is taking the mickey, but Sherlock looks genuinely baffled.

Deep, deep breath.

“Do you want to dance with me” says John, head and eyes low, speaking slowly and articulating carefully, as if he was addressing a child or a person with a very basic grasp of English. He expects Sherlock to come back with something snarky about it, so he waits, looking to something that happens to be in the opposite direction from where Sherlock stands. And he waits. And he waits. And then it hits him that, since this is Sherlock, the silence could go on all night.

So he looks up and, indeed, Sherlock has a mask of alarm on and he is totally petrified.

John knows that face.  And it tends to freak him out eventually. “Sherlock?” he says. “Before a bloody cha-cha comes on.” (Or his resolve falters.) “Sherlock? ...Oi!”

Sherlock snaps out of it and looks up to him, still pretty much in shock.

“Sherlock? Dancing?” John tries to sound nonchalant, but his voice is trembling. Please, Lord…

Sherlock harrumphs. “Yes, of course” he says, squinting, as if he is still not sure he has got this right. He puts his drink down and strides to the very centre of the dancing area, where he stands, rigid as a pole. John drains his glass, takes a deep breath, and follows him.

“So” he says, with a strained smile. “How do we do this?”

“Well, obviously, you stand here and you put one hand here…” Sherlock guides John’s right hand to his waist “…and hold my hand. I can’t believe you’ve forgotten already. These are the very basics.”

John huffs, but he’s smiling -and shaking. “I haven’t forgotten. I’m not that hopeless.”

“We’ll see about that” says Sherlock. “Right, your left foot. Ow! The other left foot! Focus, John!”

John is laughing openly now.

“It’s not funny, it’s quite worrying” says Sherlock. “You’re not a completely idiotic man, you should be able to at least…”

“Shut.Up.” cuts John. “Just…”

He takes one more deep breath, trying to blank out all the looks he feels fixed on them. He puts one hand firmly on Sherlock’s waist, holds Sherlock’s hand, and pulls him close, closer than he ever had him when they practiced behind drawn curtains at the flat, their fronts touching. He starts swaying slowly, completely disregarding the steps.

“John, this is not how you…”

“Shush” cuts John again.

Sherlock shuts his mouth. His hand in John’s hand feels cold and dry, and hard, and bony, and smoother than he remembered. Sherlock’s other hand, on John’s shoulder, starts off light as a feather but soon gains presence and weight. There’s a hot and cold tumble in John’s stomach, his heart thumping hard. It’s not entirely disagreeable, but it’s intense.

Beyond that, John doesn’t know where to look and he feels painfully awkward. They’re not exactly gliding together like swans on a frozen lake. But it’s Sherlock’s rock hard waist under his hand, that bone there is his hip, and John’s eyes, when he dares lift them from their well-polished shoes, are in line with his mouth. The warmth of Sherlock’s body on his own. All in all, it’s enough to justify the swimming sensation in his head.

_“...All of the things that I want to say just aren’t coming out right. I’m tripping on words. you’ve got my head spinning. I don’t know where to go from here…”_

They’ve come a long way in six weeks. Just one more step and they’re home, if only he can bring himself to take it.

It’s more easily said than done.

_“Something about you now, I can’t quite figure it out. Everything she does is beautiful, everything she does is right…”_

He licks his lips and there’s some churning deep in his belly. He makes himself look up to Sherlock’s face at least.

Aw, fuck. He has his eyes closed, a deep frown creases his forehead, his jaw is clenched, his expression one of deep concentration, as if he’s trying to not miss a beat. It’s bloody adorable. John’s heart aches. If there was ever a good time for a first kiss…

_“...And it’s you and me and all of the people with nothing to do and nothing to prove. And I don’t know why I can’t keep my eyes off of you...”_

But by the time the song ends, John hasn’t managed to find the courage. Another, faster song begins. Sherlock’s eyes flutter open. The moment is gone.

They both withdraw their hands as if they had got burned, and join them behind their back, almost at the same time. If he wasn’t feeling so awkward and so bloody miserable, John would admit it’s hilarious.

“Well” says John, desperate for something to say.

“Well” says Sherlock with a nervous, cheerless smile.

“That was very nice” says John. And in his mind he starts banging his head against the nearest tree. Nice? Nice?

“Yes it was” says Sherlock. “Thank you.”

John searches Sherlock’s face he does not know what for, and finds waves of minute expressions flickering there and vanishing again too quickly to tell apart.

“I’m knackered” he sighs.

“Yes, so am I” says Sherlock.

“Shall we go to bed?”

Sherlock flinches, startled, goes red as a beet.

“Ehm, that’s not-… I’m…” babbles John. And then shuts himself up, because that’s not what he was saying, but it’s exactly what he wishes he could say. His ears are probably in flames, they feel so hot. Harrumph. “Shall we then?”

Sherlock swallows —jaw tenses, Adam’s apple bobbles visibly in his long, pale throat—, and takes the first step.

They stroll leisurely to the house, not rushing, delaying even. John’s stomach is spinning, and he has to keep his hands deep inside his pockets to prevent them from shaking. Has he got this right? Are they really going to do this? He can’t see how. Even if it’s really what Sherlock wants (gulp), how the ever-living heck is it going to physically happen, when John could barely bring himself to bloody look at him while they were dancing?

Through the big hall, across the lobby, up the wooden stairs, down the colossal corridor, third door to the left —John’s finds use for his military training in the most unexpected situations; when navigating palatial manor houses, for example.

Here they are.

“Is this your room?” he asks Sherlock, in front of his own door.

“Yes.”

John chuckles. “This is mine. We’re neighbours” he comments. Victor, Victor, he thinks to himself, shaking his head.

“So” says Sherlock, hands behind his back.

“So” repeats John, incapable of making eye contact for the life of him.

This is the time. It’s got to be now.

Now, John. Go on. Go for it. Come on.

Come on John.

Now, John.

“Well” he says.

He manages to look up at least, briefly. Sherlock looks uptight, anxious.

Fucking kiss him, John!

He feels like an idiot and huffs, angry at himself. Is it his brain or his mouth that betrays him? He hears himself saying “Good night, Sherlock.”

Bugger.

Sherlock nods. “Good night, John.”

John gets inside and clicks the door shut behind him. After about two seconds, he fists his hands in fury and mouths a silent roar. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks! He peels the jacket off and throws it away with an angry sigh. He tries to kick his shoes off, but they’re well tied. Growling, he sits down and grapples with the shoelaces, his rage making him clumsy. Once they’re off, he can’t help but smashing them as hard as he can against the floor, where they bounce and hit the wall.

Fuck!

From the other side of the wall comes a dull “thud” and then a clank. And then another clank, and a muffled, but perfectly clear _“Fuck!”_

John freezes, scrunches his brow.

 _“Fuck!”_ he hears again.

John grins, almost laughs. Oh, Sherlock. What are we.

Sod. This.

He gets out there, puts himself in front of that door, takes a deep breath, raises his hand to knock, takes another deep breath for good measure.

And just as he is almost getting really close to very nearly mustering the courage to touch his knuckles to the wood, the door opens. Sherlock is standing in front of him, barefooted, curls disheveled, shirt undone, bowtie hanging untied, looking an absolute, magnificent, ravishing mess.

John opens his mouth to try and make himself say something.

Sherlock grips John’s face in his hands and crushes their mouths together. It’s sudden and artless and hungered and good, Christ, so good, teeth clacking and all. His mouth is glorious, demanding and fierce. He hears Sherlock groan, and he hears himself groan, and when Sherlock pulls back with a wet smack, his face, Jesus holy fucking Christ, the blush on his cheeks, his eyes, the way they take him in, as if John was the most desirable creature that ever has been and Sherlock was drunk in lust for him.

“God” says John, with a gasp.

“John” says Sherlock, in awe.

John hooks a hand around Sherlock’s head, the other one cups his jaw, and pulls him down for a deep, slow kiss. When he feels Sherlock’s arms wrapping around him, he hears his own breath shuddering. It’s not even lust at this point, just the peace, the relief that comes from having him there at last, where he should always have been, where he belongs. Mine, thinks John, breathing him in. With Sherlock’s wrapped strongly around him, his hot breath on the crook of his neck, his taste in his mouth, it’s almost enough, almost all he needed. He holds him in his arms tight, tighter, and wishes he could keep him there for every time he has ached to do it and couldn’t. Every time he should have held him like that, every time Sherlock needed it and John failed him. He finds himself chuckling because if he went through with it he would never let him go. Although right now he fails to see the downside in that.

“What’s funny?” He feels Sherlock’s deep, deep voice thrumming right against his ribcage. It’s fucking electrifying.

John pulls back, cradling Sherlock’s face in his hands again, shaking his own head in mock dismay. “I was just thinking what a couple of idiots we are.”

Sherlock’s low laughter is like melted chocolate and every hair in John’s body is up on end.

“Christ, come here” he mumbles, crushing their mouths together again. Sherlock’s hands stop cupping the nape of his head and descend, stroking his back, and then lower, and John’s heart skips a beat when he finds his buttocks firmly squeezed in Sherlock’s big, strong hands, and their groins pushed together. He bites on Sherlock’s lip when he feels his hardness against him, and senses rather than hears his groan.

“Bed” says John, gruff. “Now.”

The room is like a bloody football field. The bed is about ten steps away. They don’t so much walk as stumble over there, kissing and giggling nervously, like a couple of gits, every time they miss a step. He has never seen Sherlock like that. It’s intoxicating.

When they hit the bed, John watches lost for words as Sherlock sheds his clothes. His movements are rushed, business-like, and still John hasn’t seen anything sexier in his life -he’s so bloody eager. When his underwear comes down, John averts his eyes. Force of habit. He has to repeat to himself that he is allowed, that he’s welcome, to make himself look. With a shiver in his breath, he brings his eyes to Sherlock’s cock, half hard, darker than the rest of his skin, his hair only slightly less thin and sparse there than on his chest. Now that he has looked, he can’t take his eyes off him, except to run them up and down his body, his chest heaving faster.

“You’re…” _You’re even more beautiful than I had dreamed, more beautiful than I remembered, I have never seen anything more beautiful in my whole life_ , he says in his head. _And you’re mine_. “God, Sherlock” is all he manages. He holds him close for a kiss, more deliberate this one, aimed to kill, the best he can do, the pressure intense, his lips firm, his tongue playing at luring Sherlock’s out. And it mustn’t be half bad, because Sherlock whimpers, and John feels in high definition Sherlock’s cock twitching and filling against his own thigh. His own cock tugs insistently at that, fly’s about to bloody burst.

Sherlock seeks his eyes then as if asking for permission. Permission for what. He nods at whatever question he is being asked, because he can’t think of one thing he would deny Sherlock tonight. But all Sherlock wants is to unbutton his shirt. John watches him as he does, Sherlock’s eyes widening as every new bit of John’s skin is revealed, as if he was beholding a miracle. Nobody has ever looked at John this way, nobody. To have Sherlock’s eyes on him like this, after all the crap his own mind has put him through. John could bloody weep.

Naked from the waist up now. Sherlock hugs him, skin to skin, with a deep, broken sigh. John hugs him close and he wants to say you’re home now, but instead kisses his face, his neck, tightens his arms around him. Then he feels Sherlock’s mouth on his neck, open-mouthed kisses, a scratch of teeth, sucking. Jesus. His cock throbs and strains, the crotch seam pressing on it. Cursing, he struggles with the hook-and-eye plus button closure of his suit trousers, making a mess of it, as he has every time he’s tried them on. Then Sherlock’s hands are on his, and his mouth on his lips, and his clever fingers, conversational in the subtle language of smart-dressing, get rid of that difficulty in no time, without once lifting his mouth from one or another bit of John’s skin. John steps out of the trousers pooling around his ankles, and although it takes more blood in his brain than he feels able to gather at the minute, he even finds enough coordination to toe off his socks. There is a look of wonder on Sherlock’s eyes as he slips his hands under the waistband of John’s boxers and starts sliding them down his thighs. John watches Sherlock watching him when his cock springs free, and he is still watching his face when Sherlock’s hand strokes the shaft, even as it makes John suck in a sharp breath.

“John” whispers Sherlock, a full sentence in a name. Gripping John’s neck, he kisses him —and he’s not at all clumsy, as John had supposed he would be, in fact he’s bloody brilliant— and drags John to bed with him. John only gets to rest on top of him for a second, because he soon gets flipped onto his back, and Sherlock looms above him, a look of adoration on his face. He stoops down and rubs and nuzzles at John’s chest like a cat. John threads his fingers strongly in Sherlock’s hair -so soft, so soft-, while Sherlock’s lips -even softer- stroke his skin, the hair on his chest, and close around the hard bud of his nipple. Sherlock’s lips suck there, raising the flesh, meeting in with his tongue. John’s back arches, and he realises what has been nagging at him all this time. In his fantasies, Sherlock was an inexperienced virgin, and John’s scenarios for this particular situation where always gentle and slow and shy, and he very much had the initiative. Sherlock didn’t usually bite his nipples while sliding a hand between his thighs, cupping his balls and tugging at them, at least not the first time. Neither did he look up from where his tongue was playing with that wanton expression on his face, as he pressed and rubbed his palm over the hard length of John’s cock.

Then again, he had also imagined he would be cooler, more calculating, perhaps registering and filing away every sensation for later analysis. But Sherlock is not cool at all, his eyes are closed, drowsy with lust when he does open them, and he seems lost in it, drunk in it. John has never felt more wanted, almost unable to believe that he can really be the cause for Sir Cold Reason and Logic to come crumbling to pieces like that.

Sherlock has left a trail of kisses all over his chest and stomach, and now he’s made it to the sensitive bit of soft, bare skin where John’s thigh meets his groin. John has never seen anything sexier in his life: Sherlock, lips puffed and pink already from kissing, inching closer and closer to his cock. He shivers in anticipation, more excited than he was when he was about to receive his first blow job.

His tongue first, a quick brush, flicking his frenulum, lapping at it. John shakes suddenly, fighting to keep his eyes open. He fists Sherlock’s hair and feels the vibrations of Sherlock’s low groan around his cock. Sherlock closes his lips around the head and sucks gently, his tongue still playing with John’s cock inside the wet heat of his mouth. one hand wrapped around the shaft and squeezing. His eyes are fixed on John’s face, and holding his intense stare takes everything John’s got. His tongue, his lips, a gentle scrape of teeth. He teases, he plays, he torments.

John is moaning and groaning. “Ahhh... fucking hell Sherlock…”

Sherlock grins, impish, and John laughs, and they both fall into a haze, lost in each other’s eyes, astonished for an instant that this is real, that it is happening.

“Come here” mumbles John, still smiling, and Sherlock, with one last lick and a kiss to the tip of John’s cock, withdraws his mouth and climbs up his body, lying flush on top of him, his hardness cool against John’s thigh. John cradles his face in his hands. “You’re bloody brilliant at this” he says.

Sherlock smiles, all smug, and opens his mouth to say something that’s probably arrogant and obnoxious. Whatever it is, it gets swept away by John’s kiss. He will never get enough of that mouth. They grind against each other, their cocks trapped between their bodies —Sherlock’s breathing becoming laboured, shuddering, it drives John wild—, then grinding becomes rutting, then John is steadily fucking between Sherlock’s thighs.

“God, I want to… Sherlock…” _How old are you, you idiot? You’re a fucking doctor and you can’t even ask to…_

“Yes” says Sherlock. “Wait.”

Yes what? Wait what? Sherlock slips away from between his arms —cold already without him there—, and has a rummage inside his travel bag by the bed, his long, slender body white as an ancient marble in the moonlight. He returns with a tube of lube and a strip of condoms.

John is hit by the wonderful realisation that Sherlock had planned for this, that he had anticipated and prepared for the eventuality of them falling into bed together. It makes John’s pulse rush in his veins. Perhaps Sherlock has been thinking about it all evening, just like him. Perhaps sex has been on his mind all the bloody time. He finds it inebriating.

Sherlock climbs on the bed and sits astride John’s hips. John has shivers, his heart beating fast, his cock throbbing. Sherlock Holmes is about to ride him.

“Have you been tested recently, John?” says Sherlock in a low tone, almost professional.

John nods. After the Moriarty debacle, after DNA test results. Focus John.

And Sherlock discards the condoms. Good god, we’re fucking bareback.

Sherlock smothers him with lube and then himself, and John expects some kind of preparation, but Sherlock just stands up on his knees, and while John holds himself there, Sherlock finds the spot, and with a frown of concentration wills himself to open up. John can’t take his eyes off Sherlock’s face. When the head of John’s cock breeches him, he hisses, his eyes flutter, and with his mouth parted and quick gasps, he takes John in to the hilt.

John watches him there, so lithe and pale, his expression remote. Sherlock’s erection has flagged a bit, and John strokes it back to hardness just as Sherlock starts snaking his hips and raising slightly on his knees, seeking friction. Sherlock’s brow is all scrunched, his jaw unhinged. He lets himself fall hard on John’s cock with a breathy, shaky moan, throwing his head back, and John reaches up to touch his throat, painted in stark brights and deep shades by the dim clarity of the room. Sherlock looks so far away, his breathing shivering almost into a sob.

“Hey” says John, caressing his face. “Where are you?”

Sherlock opens his eyes, his expression almost pained. He opens his mouth to speak. Nothing comes out. He looks troubled.

John grins with half his mouth, still cupping his jaw, stroking. He puts his hands on Sherlock’s hips, lifts him up,  and pushes his hips against him. It sends a jolt through Sherlock’s spine, so he does it again. And again. And now Sherlock leans forward, to give John some room, while John raises his knees for leverage and starts fucking into him, and the sounds Sherlock makes, god, his face.

“There” gasps Sherlock. “God, right there.”

It’s all John needs to hear. He’ll keep at it until he makes him come, if it kills him. He snaps his hips hard and fast and watches Sherlock fall to pieces over him, his arms trembling with the effort of keeping himself propped up while he is being wrecked and made boneless by pleasure, his shoulders shaking. His moans are shamelessly loud, it’s fucking obscene. John won’t last in that position much longer —he’s forty-four, for Christ’s sake— but he wants to see him come like this. So he licks his hand and wraps his fingers around Sherlock’s cock, and Sherlock cries out and starts coming after just a few strokes, shaken up, panting hard. John keeps his eyes fixed on him, from the first sparks of his orgasm to its highest point, and all along the slide down to this, where Sherlock can focus his sight again, and realises his mouth is dry, and licks his lips and swallows, pearls of sweat glinting on his brow, his face and neck and chest flushed, his ribcage still heaving with his rushed breathing.

“God” he says, hoarse.

All John can do is smile. And impatiently squirm under him. He was very close himself.

“Are you back?” he asks.

Sherlock grins drunkenly for an answer.

“Can I keep…?” _For Christ’s sake, John_. “Can I keep fucking you? Or is it too sensitive?”

Sherlock nods yes, Sherlock shakes no.

“Lie on your back” mutters John.

Sherlock climbs off him, lies on the bed and spreads his legs, and the thing John’s crotch did at the sight, god dammit. Sherlock wraps his thighs around John’s waist and takes him in easily. John starts fucking gently at first, just in case Sherlock is over sensitised after all; he is trembling with the effort of restraining himself.

“I’m not going to break, John” says Sherlock, his voice a low rumble, his tone a bloody sin.

So he doesn’t hold anything back. He fucks as hard and fast and deep as he needs, feeling Sherlock’s eyes boring into him. He tilts his hips to try and give him a better angle, and John has to fight to keep his eyes open and look at him as pleasure starts to really burn. Sherlock’s hands squeeze his arse, he pushes down against him in counterstroke, and John hears his own moans rising, and then breaking, as he comes inside Sherlock, buried to the hilt, panting hard, hips snapping and his whole body jolting with the aftershocks.

For a while they don’t speak. They lie side to side, their breathing loud in the dark, John’s heartbeat thumping in his chest, a buzz in his ears.

“Are you disappointed?” asks Sherlock out of the blue.

“Wha-who, me? Disappointed?”

“You said you had anticipated this.”

John chuckles. Not so much anticipated as fantasised about it, dreamed about it, hoped for it, prayed for it… “Yes I had. Lots of times.”

“Then?”

“No, Sherlock, I’m not disappointed, it was… in my dreams you… It was brilliant, better than my dreams. You were fantastic. You really were… It was amazing.”

A silence.

“I know I don’t have a lot of experience” says Sherlock, with a small voice.

John smiles, holds Sherlock’s hand.

“Do you think I should send Victor some flowers then?” He knows he is playing with fire with this kind of jokes. And indeed, next to him Sherlock has startled, and now he is very, very quiet. John turns his face to him, hoping there is enough clarity for Sherlock to see that he is smiling, and not just a bit. “You may not have had a lot of experience, but it was obviously to a very high standard” he says. And he smiles some more, for good measure.

It takes about a minute while Sherlock frowns and processes what he has heard and in what tone is was really meant.

“I believe he would be more for chocolates” says Sherlock, finally, with a little smirk, delightfully shy.

John laughs openly, and the look Sherlock gives him is brimming with love and wonder. He kisses him and hugs him and he doesn’t remember feeling happier in his life. He suddenly finds himself entangled in pale, spindly limbs. So, it would appear Sherlock is a hugger, who would have thought? The scent of Sherlock’s hair is right under his nose, his heat all over him. They lie on the bedspread, sticky, sweaty, blissful.

“I had dreamed about this, too” mutters Sherlock, a whisper.

John squeezes him tight. “And are you disappointed?” And fuck, John is not even worried. Sherlock just didn’t look disappointed to him when-, well, then.

“Absolutely not” says Sherlock, dead serious, his hot, moist breath against the crook of John’s neck.

John starts feeling drowsy now, as he usually does after orgasm. His breathing is settling into a paused rhythm. He still feels all fuzzy from his high.

“John, do you know the name of the song?”

“What song?”

“The one we danced to. The waltz.”

Yes, yes he does. But he’s not about to just confess that he sometimes listens to sad love songs and mopes. “I’m not sure, why?”

“I asked Victor what Violet meant…”

“Who’s Violet?” cuts John.

“The singer. What Violet meant when she said that they had chosen the song for their first dance, when they had obviously hadn’t, because they were both surprised when they heard it. Victor said that it was while Violet was singing that song that he and Alex first kissed. There was no music the first time we kissed, or the second, for that matter, so I thought our song should be the first we danced together to” he says in a long string of words, without pausing once for breath.

John is pretty much speechless.

“Do you remember or not?” insists Sherlock.

“Ehm, it’s not obligatory, you know? We don’t have to have a song.”

“Of course we have to.”

“Er, why?”

“What are we going to dance to at our own wed…?”

John suppresses a guffaw of laughter. He can’t believe his ears. “Our what?” he nudges him.

“Nothing.”

You’re not getting away that easily, mister. “Our wedding?”

Nothing from Sherlock.

John smiles quietly to himself, feeling full to the brim with love and happiness and yes, completely baffled by it all. This is really Sherlock, isn’t it?

“It was ‘You and me’ by Lifehouse” he says.

Nothing from Sherlock for another minute.

Then John gets squeezed half to death, Sherlock’s face burrowing into his neck as if he is actually trying to get under his skin.

John hugs back, strokes his back softly. “Should I go shopping for rings tomorrow then?” he asks, ruffling Sherlock’s hair -he had been dreaming of doing that for ages.

“Don’t be ridiculous” snaps Sherlock.

A pause.

“Nothing outrageous” says Sherlock then.

John laughs. “I’ll get what I bloody well like.”

Sherlock rears his head back, squinting at him, opens his mouth -to say something snarky probably-, so John shuts him up with a kiss. It works wonders. Shame he didn’t know this method five years ago.

He laughs to himself with Sherlock nuzzling again against his neck. He sighs deeply. What a night.

 

**  
  
**


	9. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little after note to bind it all...

 

John opens one eye.

“Sherlock…”

Sherlock keeps staring at him from about six inches away. “Yes, John.”

“Aren’t you sleepy?” mumbles John, slurring his words.

“No, not at all.” Sherlock is wide awake and has been for hours. He hasn’t even blinked. So to speak.

John rubs his eyes, and when he opens them again he looks surprised, as if he had expected that Sherlock would be gone by then, or at least somewhat further apart. Why would he think that, Sherlock hasn’t got a clue.

“This staring thing…” mumbles John. “Can you…?”

“Oh, sorry” says Sherlock. He does retreat a couple of inches. John doesn’t look satisfied yet. Sherlock rests his head on the pillow. Surely that should be enough.

“Sherlock, you need to stop staring at me like that now. It’s creepy.”

Not enough, then.

“But I can’t sleep, John” he says.

John sighs.

“Roll over” he says, pushing his shoulder. Sherlock turns little spoon against John’s big spoon. “That’s it.”

In about thirty seconds, John’s breathing is again deep and slow.

Sherlock enjoys the feel of John’s body and his warmth. He is no stranger to sudden effusions and surges of emotion, or to euphoria even, but he is not familiar at all with this quieter, more serene sensation of content. It’s an understated, discrete, murmuring flow of a feeling, but it seems capable of withstanding a hurricane.

He is all wired up though, his mind reeling. If he wasn’t a rational man, and didn’t have all the empirical proof one could possibly need already plastered on his skin from neck to foot, with special mention to the middle, he would be tempted to pinch himself or something of the sort. It’s just so hard to believe. He had despaired so many times that this would ever come to pass. He has had to pick himself up again and again after having a tough reckoning with his own feelings, facing reality and accepting that it was impossible, no matter how hard he wished for it. He had told himself so many times that he needed to stop hoping because it hurt, and that it was absurd, unnecessary and an unwanted interference with his life (not even the work at this point) to keep inflicting this upon himself. It’s as if this pattern of thought is so deeply engraved in his brain that it will take a lot more than one night to overcome it.

Which is probably where the staring intently at John’s sleeping face for two hours falls in. Or maybe not. At this moment in time he doesn’t feel all that rational at all.

He will not go to sleep. How could he. There has been a shift of paradigm in the known universe, the planets have realigned, the poles have been inverted (Yes, reaching out into a cosmic field of metaphor which is really not his area of expertise, but it would seem as if the realm of the minuscule, where he is most comfortable, simply won’t hold or begin to express what happened tonight.) How is he expected to go back to sleep just like that? He can’t hardly wake up John for another round, not again. (“HmmmSher… What are you…? Christ, but you want to kill me…! …Oh, alright, come here.”) John has already made a very stern point that he is to be left to rest for the night or he would not “be up for anything” in the morning. To which Sherlock giggled idiotically, and even worse when John has said “no pun intended”, laughing as well, between yawns that (don’t tell John, never tell John) make him look a bit like a puppy. It felt nice and warm inside, layers of something ugly and suffocating peeling away, and oppressive, sour weights lifting up and vanishing every time they laugh together.

Something must be done. He’s buzzing with pent up energy, dying to thrash and kick and bounce his legs. But we must not wake John, or he might not want to make love again in the morning, and that we simply cannot have.

Slowly and carefully, and quite reluctantly, he slithers away from John’s arms. As silently as he can, he searches his bag for scruffs to wear and, with one last look to John’s sleeping figure on the bed, he sneaks out.

 

Down the corridor. It is strange to be back in this place. He remembers it better than he thought he would. He never made a conscious effort to forget it, but he had not realised he had registered the details so thoroughly. He can tell which paintings and sculptures have been moved or replaced, which pieces of furniture are new, which chairs have been re-upholstered. Part of it is mere deduction, but the memories are there. Oh well, his mind palace was in its infancy the first time he was here. There were many aspects of its inner mechanisms that occurred subconsciously still. He cared for this place once. He still finds it welcoming.

Down the back stairs, through the old servants’ passage, across the pantry, into the kitchen.

There is a light on. What time is it, 4 o’clock?

He finds Victor leaning over the kitchen island, eating cake in his pyjamas, a glass of milk in front of him. He spots Sherlock and he smiles, cheeks full, waving at him to come over.

Sherlock makes his way there, while Victor chases his mouthful of cake with some milk. When Sherlock is in front of him across the island, and Victor can get a clear look of his face, his eyebrows raise and he starts laughing.

“Oh my god!” says Victor, between chuckles. “Look at you!”

Sherlock, rather absurdly, does look at himself. At his chest and stomach and his extended hands, to be precise, which is what his eyes can reach.

“What?” he snaps, while Victor’s giggling fit keeps running its course.

“I’ve never seen anyone looking more well-fucked in my life!” laughs Victor. “You’re fucking glowing!”

Sherlock frowns. He scans Victor quickly and retorts.

“That’s because you haven’t seen yourself in the mirror” he counters, after taking in the bed head, the slight pink blur around the edges of his still swollen lips, the fresh love-bites on his neck.

Victor returns a feline, self-satisfied smile.

“Oh yes,” he says, another spoonful of cake. “Why do you think I’m not sitting down?” A wink.

Sherlock grins back. He is indeed feeling remarkably well-fucked, relaxed and fuzzy, and Victor might not even be exaggerating with the glowing. He does perch on the high stool. There is a slight pinch when he lands, but it’s perfectly manageable.

“I’m so bloody happy for you, Sherlock” says Victor, with his brightest smile and his warmest look.

Sherlock nods, smirks, possibly blushes.

They sit together in companionable silence, Sherlock lost in his thoughts. Victor finishes his cake and milk, and stretches his arms and back with a groan.

“Look at us” he says. “Why aren’t we snoring next to our men?”

Sherlock shrugs.

“Are you up for an adventure?” says Victor, wagging his eyebrows.

“What?”

“Through a dark jungle, across the cannibal’s village, up the tower, into the diamond mine.”

Sherlock stares at Victor and tries to look unimpressed, but he’s grinning.

“Come on” says Victor, offering his hand. “I dare you.”

Sherlock  is still grinning. So he grins some more, and takes Victor’s hand.

He leads them back through the servants passage and into the corridor where the bedrooms are.

“Jungle” whispers Victor, still holding Sherlock’s hand. The corridor is flanked with one row of fluted columns with luscious Corinthian capitals, and the tall, narrow windows are open to the leafy crowns of poplars and birches growing by the house. At a stretch, yes, alright, it’s a jungle. Sherlock shakes his head and rolls his eyes, biting a smirk.

Victor seems to be headed straight for the tower room. His room. His and Alex. He stops in front of the door and grabs the handle.

“What are you up to?” mutters Sherlock, pulling him back.

Victor touches a finger to his own lips to shush him, and winks.

“Cannibals” he whispers, and opens the door, dragging Sherlock in decisively behind him. Treading silently, he takes them both to the steps that climb to the mezzanine. Sherlock tries to be as quiet as a mouse and manages not to pry. Almost. Except for one quick peak when there’s a rustling noise coming from the bed, where Alex has just turned onto his front and is now sprawling and snoring slightly, stark naked except for not a lot of sheet. Sherlock blushes so hard he can feel the heat radiating from his face, and does not lift his eyes from his feet until he gets to the mezzanine. Not that it matters, the image is still burned in his retinas.

On the mezzanine there is a door leading to the rooftop of the house. Sherlock and Victor spent a few nights there that summer a long time ago, amid the dull green lead cupolas, dormer windows, chimneys, antennas, spiracles and other strange reliefs, a most outlandish landscape, made even eerier under the bright moonlight that paints it all silver. Victor closes the door gently behind them.

Sherlock takes a few steps across the rooftop, smiling. He had loved this place the first time he was here. It had made him feel excited as a little boy, an adventure around every corner, games to play and such a lot of sky and land to gaze upon. And Victor’s laughter and his eyes on him like that, exactly as they are now, full of love, a hint of mischief in his smile that mirrors Sherlock’s enthusiasm. Sherlock understands now, better than he ever has, what Victor loved about him, and what he loved about Victor. And it’s just there, between them both, unchanged.

Victor walks to the ledge, hands clasped behind his back, and tilts his head back to face the stars.

“Cassiopeia, Draco, Ursa Minor… You can’t see much tonight, the moon is too bright.” Victor looks at him. “I read in John’s blog some crap about you not knowing anything about the Solar system?”

“You read John’s blog?”

Victor smiles minutely for an answer. “What happened then?” he asks, sadness in his voice. “Did you delete it all? All the stars?”

Sherlock shrugs, and then swallows, because he was about to try and make light of it but he finds that he can’t.

“I had no use for it anymore.” He looks down. “It was one of the first things I did. After I went home.”

Victor looks down as well. They have never really talked about it. Sherlock assumes Mycroft has answered whatever questions Victor might have had. Still, he wonders if he owes him some sort of explanation, now that he’s had years to reflect and understand it all better. He still feels like an infant when faced with that time of his life, grappling for meaning and sense. He had stumbled into Victor without a plan and without a purpose. He had never for once felt in control while they had been together, even after walking away. Sometimes it had been a good thing, between them. He wants to say that. He wants to say we had good times, remember?

Sherlock doesn’t offer anything. Victor doesn’t ask for it. Instead, his eyes brighten up as if he’s just had a wonderful idea. He whooshes past Sherlock, towards a bulk covered in a tarpaulin sheet. Under it there is a very respectable (but remarkably unpretentious for a man who could possibly afford better equipment than many universities) amateur telescope. He sets it up with practiced ease, adjusts it, looks up, searches. Still looking through the eyepiece, he wiggles his finger for Sherlock to approach.

Sherlock shuffles over, suspicious.

“I swear, if this is Uranus…”

Victor chuckles, moving away to grant Sherlock his turn.

“Just the moon” he says.

Sherlock gasps. To think he had never done this before, what a travesty! The thing seems to really shine from within! And such stark detail! The reliefs! The edges of the craters with the long impact lines, the might of the object that caused it! It’s astounding!

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” says Victor.

Sherlock can’t stop looking. He stays long enough that the moon starts to slide out of frame.

“So fast” says Sherlock in wonder.

Victor nods. “2,288 miles per hour.”

Sherlock keeps his eye glued to the eyepiece until the moon has eclipsed away. Then he looks up to find Victor staring at him, with a kind of longing and sadness, and a warmth in his eyes that transports Sherlock straight back. How many times did Victor look at him exactly like that. He feels a choke in his throat when the ghost of who he was then rises up, even though nobody summoned it or wanted it there. That boy suffered quite a lot, and caused even more harm. And he finds himself not far away enough from him —the bloody moon wouldn’t be far enough— to reach out of himself and say the thousand things his friend deserves to hear.

“You got me into astronomy, did you know?” says Victor then.

Sherlock looks up to him.

“No, I didn’t know.”

“You got me into a lot of things” says Victor, reaching up to stroke Sherlock’s face.

Sherlock smiles, and he thinks the warmth and the love inside him must show, if Victor’s expression in response is anything to go by.

Victor hugs him tight. Sherlock hugs him back. It feels as right as it always has.

Sherlock will learn the words he owes his friend, and will learn to say them. They have time.

 

*

 

He tip-toes out of the room, with one last look at Victor, who waves at him just before climbing into bed and snuggling close to his man. Alex groans and throws an arm over him without waking up.

Sherlock shuts the door as quietly as he can.

He strolls back to his room —their room—, hands clasped behind his back.

When he walks in, he finds John lying on his back, sheets pooling around his waist, compact, solid, real. Again, he is tempted to pinch himself. Again, he will seek empirical evidence by other, much more pleasurable means. He slips into bed and wraps around John. He doesn’t even consider for a second if he should.

John stirs, finding himself suddenly covered in Sherlock, but taking it in stride as if it was a regular occurrence that happened every night.

“Hmmm… alright love?” he mumbles.

Sherlock’s heart skips a beat. _Love_.

He nuzzles into John’s neck, clinging tight.

“Yes, I’m fine. Sleep” he says.

John exhales deeply and kisses his head.

“I love you” John says, his words a bit slurred, a bit shaky.

Sherlock snuggles even closer. He wonders if he _can_.

“I love you, John” A mumble. Still counts.

John’s breath has caught. He hugs tight, tight, for a long time. There are words, rivers of them resonating in that hug. And Sherlock can feel each and every one of them, like a song.

 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> My wonderful beta Cloisteredself was here and did a lot of good.


End file.
